The Origin of the Human Race

Man Through the Ages

5^

V.R Alexeev

The Orisin
of the

Human Race

Translated from the Russian by
H. Campbell Creighton, M. A.(Oxon)

E0

Progress Publishers
Moscow

Designed by Vadim Novikov

B. n. AneKceeB

B03HHKH0BEHHE MEJIOBEqECTBA
Ha aHzauiicKOM n3biKe

© H3AaTejibCTBo “Ilporpecc”, 1986

English translation © Progress Publishers 1986
Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

0504000000-532
A-

014(01)- 86

27- 86

CONTENTS

Page

From the Author . 7

Introduction. The Place of Humankind in the

Universe. 9

The Occurrence of Life in the Universe. 9

The Occurrence of Rational Life (Facts). 12

The Occurrence of Rational Life (the Problem) . 13

Anthropogeocentrism as an Effective World Outlook 18

1. The Evolution of the Biosphere. 21

The Structural Levels of Animate Matter in the

Biosphere. 21

The Origin and Evolution of the Biosphere. 33

Patterns of Development of the Biosphere. 42

The Transition of the Biosphere to the Noosphere 49

2. The Origin and History of the Hominid

Family. 52

Morphology and the Principles of Anthropogenesis 52

The Criteria of Man. 60

The Hominid Triad and the Initial Form of the Evo¬
lution of Hominids. 65

Division of the Hominid Family into Subfamilies 76
Division of the Subfamily of Australopithecinae

into Genera and Its Place in Hominid History. 81

Tne Subdivision of the Subfamily of Man Proper

into Genera. 84

Subdivision of the Genus of Archanthropes into

Species and Its Place in Hominid History. 89

Subdivision of the Genus Homo into Species. 94

The Place of Palaeoanthropes in Hominid History .... 97

Integration of the Categories of the Classification
System. 99

3

3. The Origin and Early History of Tool Use 104

The Beginning and Structure of Tool Use.104

The Ecological Prerequisites for the Transition to

Tool Use.114

The Beginning of Tool Use and Economic Activity 120

The Development of Tool Use and Tool-Making.129

The Time of the Rise and Character of Local

Differences in Culture.139

The Labour Theory of Anthropogenesis. The Change in
Physical Type of Ancient Hominids.144

4. The Origin and Initial Stage of the Development

of Language.150

The Origin of Language an Extralinguistic Problem? 150
Sound Intercourse among Animals in General and Apes

in Particular.157

The Morphology and Reconstruction of the Initial

Stage of the Origin of Speech.170

On the Boundaries of the Sphere of Use of Gestures 191
Ontogenesis and Problems of the Origin of Language 197
The Main Stages in the Development of Speech and
Language .200

5. The Palaeopsychology of Man .219

Palaeopsychology: the Limits and Possibilities of

Reconstruction .219

The Nature of the Logical, Sphere of Consciousness,

and the Unconscious in Primitive Thought.228

Demonstration Manipulation and the Origin of Tool

Use.239

On the Origin of Elementary Oppositions and Psychic

Constants.241

The Diffuseness and Concreteness of Primitive

Thought.252

Individual Combinations of Psychic Properties.255

‘We and They’or the Ethnic Factor.261

6. On the Formation of Social Relations .267

The Sense and Scope of the Concept.267

Biological Prerequisites.269

The Dynamics of Primordial Band.282

7. The Genesis of the Antropogeocoenosis.286

About Economic-Cultural Types.286

Anthropogeocoenosis as an Elementary Cell of the

Primitive Economy and Its Structure.294

The Anthropogeocoenosis in the System of Social
Relations and its Geographic Adaptability.305

4

The Anthropogeocoenosis and the iological Differen¬

tiation of Humankind.319

The Historical Dynamic of Anthropogeocoenoses 321

In Lieu of a Conclusion: Some Problems of

Primitive Mankind .326

A Look Back.326

The Biosphere and Man’s Psychic World.331

Why Does the Human Mind Seek Explanations? 333

Periodisation.336

Law or Chance.339

The List of Recommended Reading .343

FROM THE AUTHOR

First of all, a few words about my interests, pas¬
sions, and antipathies in my chosen theme. This
book is an attempt to take as full account as possible
of the latest findings and data, and to modify general
conceptions in accordance with them, but at the same
time to avoid burdening the text with petty details
and to maintain a smooth presentation and paint a
whole, integrated panorama of primaeval history.
Therefore, while giving their due to the creators of
the science, I do not avoid discussion of disputed,
still unresolved issues, and consider mankind’s biolog¬
ical dynamics only through the prism of its social
evolution. At the same time, I trace the biological
sources of many phenomena that subsequently
became isolated from their biological basis and that
must be appraised as genuinely social acquisitions of
human society.

Some people still write now that everything bes¬
tial and animal is an inseparable feature of the social
life of animals, that zoological individualism prevailed
in the social nuclei of ancient men, and that the social
arises as a negation of the biological. I have always
believed (and made my best to adduce the necessary
arguments in the book) that the social is the highest
stage of development which includes and makes
subordinate to itself the most fundamental proper¬
ties of the biological.

The whole problematic dealt with on the pages
that follow is of immense ideological importance.
Humankind’s place in the Universe, man’s position in

7

nature, the sources of many human institutions,
man’s first steps on our planet, man’s understanding
of the world around him, have all been eternal themes
of the philosophical and scientific quests of people
in all ages, and a reflection of the human soul’s
insatiable thirst to understand itself and its history.
Any set of facts that helps us to look at these themes
in a way different from what was done before, and
to throw fresh light on them, has therefore always
been closely linked with vital questions of society’s
ideological affairs and its scientific, religious, and
philosophical ideas in any age. So a bridge is thrown
from the morphology of ancient hominids and the
first rudiments of human culture to the most topical
problems of the study of mankind’s history and
culture.

To avoid being reproached for completely ignoring
the problem of the moulding of the aesthetic element
in man and the origin of art, I must say that an im¬
mense stock of empirical observations and theoreti¬
cal constructs has been accumulated on that, and
hundreds of tomes devoted to it. It would not make
sense to write about it superficially, yet a deep
discussion calls for a special exposition. So there is
no discussion of it in this volume.

Finally, the last point I must make concerns the
concrete, historical character of my approach and
treatment of all the themes discussed. The philosoph¬
ical significance of the problem of anthropogenesis
and the beginning of human society has led to its
being developed in the context of a philosophical ap¬
proach. For all the obviousness of the fact that man’s
ancestors differentiated from the animal kingdom thro¬
ugh the effect of the laws of natural history, teleolog¬
ical hypotheses are still being developed; the books of
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin are an example. I have
deliberately tried to restrict the sphere of exposi¬
tion of general philosophical hypotheses, and even
more so of teleological ones, endeavouring to stick
scrupulously to the facts and to limit myself only to
conclusions that follow directly from them.

INTRODUCTION

THE PLACE OF HUMANKIND IN THE UNIVERSE

The Occurrence of Life in the Universe

Earth is the planet of Life. We can say that both
from our personal experience and from the historical
experience of all mankind, although present-day
notions of what life is are far from as complete as
we could desire.

Engels’ classic definition, formulated in accordance
with the level of science in the latter half of the last
century, that life is the mode of existence of protein
bodies, stressed one of its most fundamental proper¬
ties; for all the extraordinary variety of its forms and
manifestations they are based in our earthly condi¬
tions on the interaction of complex molecules whose
main chemical components are carbon and oxygen. In
connection with man’s penetration of outer space,
hypotheses of the possibility in principle of living
systems’ functioning on another basis have been put
forward in the course of theoretical work on the
fundamental problems of life, i. e. on the basis of the
interaction of molecules in which silicon, say, which
also yields complex compounds, might take the place
of carbon. But the idea itself of an interaction of the
maximally complex molecules that form the basis of
all forms of life known to us, i. e. protein compounds,
has been fully confirmed by subsequent research.
Engels’ definition is therefore sufficiently exhaustive;
the more so that the theoretically postulated pos¬
sibility of other, non-protein forms of life has not
yet been confirmed either by astronomical observa¬
tions or experimentally, and remains unrealised. At
the same time, however, since the appearance of the

9

pioneer works of A. I. Oparin (1924) and J. B. S.
Haldane (1929), interest in experimental develop¬
ment of the principles has led to much deeper knowl¬
edge than before of the adaptive capabilities of life,
and of its stability in extreme environments. The
science of possible cosmic manifestations of life, the
space aspects of biology (exobiology), created in
recent decades, which takes its source from the views
of eighteenth century natural philosophy, but which
has reached the level of exact observation only with
man’s penetration of outer space, has now already
amassed a considerable stock of observations that
confirms the enormous resistivity of life to unfavour¬
able effects of the environment.

But what are the limits of the plasticity of life and
the range of its adaptation to external conditions
evoked by that plasticity? The data of a variety of
experiments and observations make it possible to
give a general answer. We know that life continues to
exist at temperatures close to that of boiling water,
can withstand a considerable lowering of tempera¬
ture, penetrate toxic media (solutions of mercuric
chloride and acids), ‘breathe’ methane, ammonia, and
carbon monoxide. Its resistance to changes of the
medium is even more striking when it takes the form
of anabiosis. In many cases this cryptic life is ac¬
companied with a dehydration of the living structures.
In such a state, preserved by nature itself, life endures
even more severe effects, surviving at temperatures up
to 170°C and down almost to absolute zero. And
after a long period in such conditions life can re¬
sume its cycle and pass to normal functioning with
the further self-reproduction so characteristic of and
necessary for it. That made it possible to say, with a
high degree of probability, that life in some form
existed on several planets of the solar system, primari¬
ly on Mars and Venus. The network of ‘canals’ on Mars
was long regarded at the beginning of the century as
evidence of the existence of an organised biosphere
there, until their abiogenic origin was demonstrated.
The Soviet astronomer G. A. Tikhov, after many
years’ study of the absorption and reflection spectra

10

of terrestrial mountain vegetation and of Mars,
established a certain similarity between them and
postulated the creation of quite new sciences, viz.,
astrobotany and astrobiology. But, as we know,
indisputable traces of life have not yet been dis¬
covered outside Earth, in spite of intensive work to
master outer space, and of numerous research pro¬
grammes to discover them. Enthusiasts, it is true, still
write about the possibility of discovering traces of
extinct life on Mars, but such suppositions are akin,
alas, to what is discussed in science fiction.

What we have said about the broad spectrum of
life’s adaptive capabilities cannot, strictly speaking,
be taken as an immanent property of life but rather
as the result of its evolution over billions of years.
Many facts suggest that the evolutionary process is
not just the adaptation of individuals to one another
but also adaptation to the life medium, and means a
broadening of the sphere of life, and its penetration
into newer and newer ecological niches. It can be
supposed that life was more ‘vulnerable’ at the dawn
of its evolution and less adaptable to a diversity of
environmental conditions. Palaeontology (see, for
example, Fox, 1975; Vologdin, 1976) and biochemis¬
try (Serebrovskaya, 1971;Ponnamperuma, 1977) both
testify to that. Thus, if life ever arose in other worlds
besides Earth, which is theoretically possible, any
extraterrestrial life may now, consequently, be very
different both in its forms and in its functional
manifestations. But all that remains a supposition
without concrete confirmation.

So there are many speculative hypotheses and
more or less interesting ideas about the ‘geography’
of life in the Universe. But we do not have the main
thing, viz., empirical facts, to confirm the existence
of life anywhere in the Universe except on our planet.
We have to allow for the absence of such facts and,
without abandoning attempts at a theoretical analysis
of the question of a host of worlds inhabited by living
organisms, must start from what is already empirically
known, namely that the life we know is propagated
only within the bounds of our planet.

11

The Occurrence of Rational Life
(Facts)

The first scheme for receiving extraterrestrial
radio signals and decoding them was the Ozma
project carried out in 1960 by Frank Drake at the
National Radioastronomy Observatory at Green
Bank, W. Va., by means of apparatus specially devel¬
oped for the purpose. Radio-frequency radiation was
picked up from two stars roughly 11 light years
from the Sun. Drake made observations for several
months but got no positive results. After the Amer¬
ican work, attempts to pick up signals from neigh¬
bouring planetary systems were made by the Soviet
radioastronomer V. S. Troitsky and his fellow-
workers, who observed 12 stars ten to sixty light
years distant from Earth. Each star was screened
five times, each seance lasting 15 minutes. In this
case, too, in spite of hours of observation, positive
results were not obtained. Observation of radio¬
frequency radiation from the nearest stars were
continued by other workers for quite a long time,
though not so regularly as in the foregoing cases.
The results were negative.

In 1974 there was an attempt to send radio signals
to other worlds rather than pick up ones from outer
space. This attempt was made with the huge radio-
telescope in Arecibo (Puerto Rico). A communica¬
tion was sent toward the star cluster Messier 13
(in Hercules), which consists of approximately
30,000 stars. The probability of the existence of
civilisations on the planetary stars of that cluster is
close to 0.5 in the opinion of the research workers.
The radio signal from Earth should reach them in
24,000 years; at best, consequently a reply would
be obtained in 48,000 years. It is quite a pessimistic
outlook, you will agree, even if an answer is obtained!
That, however, does not deter the enthusiasts, and an
artificial language has even been invented for inter¬
planetary communications, known as lincos (i.e. lin¬
guistics of the cosmos).

The high cost of picking up and sending the radio

12

signals, plus the complete uncertainty of obtaining
any appreciable results (however convincing the
theoretical estimates), would seemingly explain
why permanent observation of radio-frequency
radiation from the Universe is still not maintained for
the special purpose of discovering their organised
character. Strictly speaking, success can only be
hoped for with constant, permanent observation.
The uniqueness of the rational life, and of life in
general in the Universe, concentrated on Earth
remains unverified by direct observations.

The Occurrence of Rational Life
(the Problem)

The striving for full knowledge has always outrun
knowledge itself in the history of mankind. Hence
philosophical quests and theoretical reflections
begin where direct knowledge is unattainable because
cognitive possibilities are limited at a given moment
of mankind’s historical development. This applies
also to the problem of rational life in the Universe,
and as we see, the extremely few practical observa¬
tions, and the negative results they yielded, have not
prevented sophisticated thinking and the creation of
many ramified hypotheses, caustically critical of each
other, and remarkable for sublime philosophical
generalisations. Their authors draw not only on
astronomical and astrophysical observations, but
also on historical research, archaeological facts, and
sociological findings; the hypotheses have a truly
complex, natural-science and humanitarian character,
and force us to look at mankind’s past history from a
new angle, and touch on very topical, vital issues of
its future development.

Different philosophical approaches to the problem
in different countries based on data of various sciences
have generated exceptionally varied answers to many
questions that traditionally seemed solved. We ob¬
viously do not have the space here, nor the need, to
review all the views expressed; suffice it to say that

13

the whole range of answers to the question of the
occurrence of rational life in the Universe lies between
the two points of view expounded in articles that
appeared in 1976-77 in the journal Voprosy filosofii,
published in the USSR. One of the opponents,
I. S. Shklovsky (1976) advanced a whole series of
calculations and theoretical considerations for the
uniqueness of rational life on Earth and the lack of
prospects for searches for it in the Universe; from
that point of departure he drew attention to the
exceptional responsibility that this circumstance
imposes on mankind. The other contributor,
N. S. Kardashev (1977), in contrast, very critically
evaluated all the arguments for the uniqueness of
terrestrial life in the Universe, postulating a very
high probability of its occurrence both in the star
clusters nearest to Earth and throughout the Uni¬
verse, and developed a theoretically substantiated and
practically rational strategy for discovering it and
organising contacts with other civilisations. The
argumentation of both, it must be stressed, was
brilliant and convincing, appealed not only to logic
but also to emotions, aroused and excited thought; in
the end it was difficult to prefer the one to the
other. But they were opposites, and therefore one has
to choose between them, eliminating what cannot
stand criticism and trying to reconcile statements,
which, though expressed in the heat of dispute, yet
form a single picture.

But before going deep into the substance of these
disputes it is well to ask what rational life is, what we
hope to discover in outer space when we go in search
of other civilisations, and in what sense the concept
‘rational’ applies to groups, collectives, and con¬
glomerates of living organisms.

How did Shklovsky write about rational life? He
employed the functional definition of the Soviet
mathematician, cybernetician, and theoretical biolog¬
ist A. A. Lyapunov, that it is a stable state of matter;
this stability depends on information coded in the
state of molecules. Without going into the substance
of this very general definition (it treats life, as it were,

14

from inside, without referring to its outward manifes¬
tations), we would stress that it employs evalua¬
tions based on a functional approach and ascending
to ideas about the absence of differences of prin¬
ciple between natural and artificial mind, between a
thinking being and an automaton. Kardashev em¬
ployed a similar functional definition.

In this case, however, it is very likely that the
external manifestations of rational life are more
important for us than its structural or substantial
description and definition. In any case it is by extern¬
al manifestations that we can judge whether or not
rational life exists within a star cluster. From that
angle organised radiation, non-attributable to natural
causes, and it only, can (obviously) give us evidence
of the existence of rational life in the part of the
Universe that it comes from. But, as we have already
said, we have not picked up such signals from outer
space. The problem, however, has sprouted many
theoretical ideas that we are now going to acquaint
ourselves with.

By no means the least consideration for substan¬
tiating the hypothesis of a multitude of civilisations
in the Universe is that of the paths of development of
civilisations, based on extrapolation of the rates of
development of the terrestrial civilisation known to
us to the future, and on possible suppositions of the
extreme limits of technical progress, rather than on
our terrestrial experience or on the historical stages
of mankind’s progressive movement. Kardashev
considers it possible, in particular, when speaking
of the potentialities of the evolution of civilisations,
to distinguish another two types, apart from the one
with technical possibilities similar to ours: viz.,
civilisations much more developed technologically,
in complete mastery of their planetary systems and
central stars, and ones that have mastered the outer
space and resources of their stellar systems or clus¬
ters.

There are many considerations against such opti¬
mism, however attractive it is subjectively. Several of
them were adduced in Kardashev’s own computations.

15

He put forward convincing calculations that witness
to the inevitability of man’s exodus into outer space
(implying not the fact of the exodus itself, already
realised, but mastery of a considerable part of outer
space) within the next century or two. But that
point does not remove the irreversible processes
from the agenda. At its present rates man’s consump¬
tion of energy would exceed the Galaxy’s capacity
for radiation within 1,500 years, while matter con¬
sumption in 2,000 years would come to more than
ten million Galaxies in terms of mass; the volume of
information in binary digits would then exceed the
number of atoms in the Universe, i. e. it would be
impossible in principle either to assimilate or to
remember it.

In such circumstances what is the point of contact¬
ing some extraterrestrial civilisation, even if there is
one somewhere? Leaving aside the still quite problem¬
atic hypotheses about the possibilities of trans¬
ference of anabiosis to the highest forms of life,
including man, the length of any interstellar flight,
and the length of human life, are time phenomena of
different orders. Arguments about the deformation of
time at speeds close to the velocity of light also do
not go Deyond the hypothetical limits; however
great its effect, it is still not comparable with the
scale even of the visible part of the Universe. Thus,
assuming that occurrence of rational life in the
Universe is exceptionally rare contact between the
bearers of different civilisations seems to be an
extremely improbable event even on the scale of
cosmic time. As for the exchange of radio signals, it
is difficult to imagine, given the immense technical
complexity and high cost of the systematic organisa¬
tion of such an exchange, that a civilisation compa¬
rable in technical level with Earth could arrange it
on a scale that could yield practical results. The most
that can be counted on is a discovery of ‘brethren in
reason’, the fact of no little philosophical importance,
but only of limited sense, since direct contacts are
impossible. It is my profound conviction that it is
much more hopeful to rely on ourselves than on our

16

still problematic ‘brethren in reason’.

Hypotheses of cosmic landings on our Earth have
become very common in connection with these
problems, landings that are said to have left traces
of their presence in the form of cliff drawings,
canals, cosmodromes, Cyclopean structures, and
legends preserved in the memory of various peoples,
and so on. This theme has been compromised by
many far-fetched interpretations and straight falsi¬
fications of the kind of the discussion that took
place some years ago about the extraterrestrial
origin of Central American megaliths or statements
that there is a bullet wound on a Neanderthaloid
skull from Africa, or the West European film about
traces of people from other planets on Earth, which
went the rounds of many of the world’s screens.
While keeping to the context of a more or less sober
approach, I would like to recall Prof. Shklovsky’s
analysis (1976) of a hypothesis known to me, put
forward in 1959. This was that people from outer
space visited Earth at the dawn of our civilisation,
and possibly taught Earthlings certain handicrafts
and arts and flew off again. In itself the hypothesis
did not lack inner consistency and logic, but all the
historical facts on which its author drew have a com¬
pletely rational earthly explanation, and Shklovsky
quite justifiably said so. The serious analysis of
Chinese mythology of the second century B. C. to
sixth century A. D. made by my colleague I. S. Lise-
vich (1976), which led him to a sympathetic attitude
to the hypothesis of men from outer space, was also
disputed as regards its main conclusion; a survey of
comparative mythology showed that any mythology
is full of subjects that can be interpreted (at will) in
favour of interplanetary flights to our planet, but
are more naturally explained in the context of
standard mythological typology.

The conclusion of our brief analysis of the exist¬
ing problematic regarding the occurrence of rational
life in the Universe is obvious. In the visible part
of the Universe rational life is rare, possibly unique.
Even if it is not unique, it is all the same practically

2-294

17

isolated in each case, given its obvious rarity in
the Universe. The actual reality now is as follows:
our earthly civilisation is faced with a vitally urgent
problem, viz., how to combine mastery and transfor¬
mation of circumterrestrial space with surmount¬
ing of our earthly contradictions and how not to
release the Moloch of war form Earth into outer
space.

Anthropogeocentrism as an Effective
World Outlook

When Copernicus destroyed the geocentric system
of the world and replaced the geocentric principle by
the heliocentric one, he made a tremendous revolu¬
tion in the scientific outlook, and for centuries
predetermined the theoretical treatment of cosmic
problems. The era of practical astronautics which
is giving negative answers year after year to the
question of the existence of other rational worlds
and, in general, of life in the observable part of our
Galaxy and beyond it, seems fated, at the new stage
of our knowledge, to become an era of return to the
geocentric principle in the structure of cosmogonic hy¬
potheses and awareness of man’s place in the Universe.
A.D. Ursul (1977) writes of anthropogeocosmism as
a spreading trend in modem scientific thought,
justifiably singling out the anthropic, human principle
as the central one. Revival of the geocentric principle
also requires us, in philosophical reflections about
man and the Universe, to put man at the centre,
stressing his uniqueness in the Universe around
us, and the uniqueness of the civilisation he has
created.

Astrophysical considerations can also be drawn on
when we discuss mankind’s place in the Universe,
apart from the fact of the unobservability of life
in its rational form. The significant feature of Earth
as a planet is due to the existence of a big satellite
that causes tides which facilitated the emergence of

18

life from water to land, and to the central star’s, the
Sun’s, belonging to a flat subsystem of stars that lies
outside the region of explosive processes in the
Galaxy, which has protected life on Earth from the
lethal effect of cosmic thermonuclear reactions.
Earth, as the habitat of humankind, is consequently
not a trivial point in the Universe, but is also charac¬
terised by uniqueness from the angle of astrophysi-
cal laws.

The transformation of the geocentric principle at
a high level of generalisation and awareness trans¬
lates it into an anthropogeocentric principle, i. e. of
the central position of man and humankind in the
Universe known to us. And anthropogeocentrism,
as a system of views of the world, leads naturally to
acceptance of several propositions that form a skel¬
eton of sorts of mankind’s technical development,
social behaviour, and ethical values as a whole in its
future terrestrial and cosmic evolution. Earthly civili¬
sation must face up to its exceptional responsibility
for preservation of Earth; since we are alone in the
part of the Universe around us, we cannot hope that
what we destroy will be restored by the intervention
of other, more highly developed civilisations. What
we destroy is irretrievably lost to Nature and cannot
be revived and continued in the future evolution of
matter.

But anthropogeocentrism does not have just a
futurological perspective; it naturally leads us to a
lofty human ethic of a cautious attitude to the
world around us. It also has a historical retrospect
which gives a philosophical basis to the dominant
trend in the set of historical disciplines to explain
historical events, their sequence, and the patterns
of historical progress, by historical principles of an
earthly origin. The vast work of reconstructing the
historical path followed by humankind, and Marx¬
ism’s discovery of the laws of social evolution,
paint us a picture of mankind’s regular, natural
movement dong a road of technical progress, accu¬
mulation of knowledge, perfecting of social relations,
and passage from one social formation to another,

2 *

19

more developed one. There is no place in that picture
for inexplicable information outbursts and the
sudden appearance of supernatural technical dis¬
coveries. With fewer superfluous fantasies and more
confidence in observable facts, the law-governed
historical development of earthly civilisation rises
up before us in all its grandeur and makes us feel the
vast majesty of the material and spiritual values it
has created.

1

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BIOSPHERE

The Structural Levels, of Animate
Matter in the Biosphere

This section is devoted to analysis of certain very
essential aspects of the structure of the biosphere,
especially that of animate matter, which is its most
active component. I shall endeavour to demonstrate
the structural complexity of this component and
the variety of problems involved in studying it.
This attention to animate matter is justified by the
aim of my book, because thought arises from life,
and the human race is the highest product of the
development of animate matter.

Once the concept of structural levels was formulat¬
ed, it was taken firmly into biology and is now one
of the integral foundation stones of biological theory.
The concept was developed both by philosophers
investigating it as one of the main concepts in the
general theory of systems and by biologists endeavour¬
ing to bring out, take stock of, and concretely in¬
vestigate the structural levels of living nature. Dis¬
cussion is still going on around the problem of
structural levels among both philosophers and biolo¬
gists which is due to its complexity and most immedi¬
ate link with the cardinal problems of the theory of
biology.

There are several approaches in biology to elu¬
cidation of the structural levels of the organisation of
animate matter. The scheme of N. V. Timofeyev-
Resovsky (1958, 1961) is widely accepted in the
Soviet literature; in it there are four levels: molecu¬
lar, ontogenetic, population, and biogeocoenotic.
Any one of these schemes is an expression of the

21

undoubted fact of a structural differentiation of
living nature. But attempts to pick out one of them
come up against the lack of clearly formulated
theoretical ideas of the hierarchy of levels, their mu¬
tual significance in the differentiation of living
nature, and the criteria for singling them out. Hence
the unending disputes about their number, the
isolation of one level or another as the main one, and
so on.

Before we discuss the question of the number of
structural levels and the criteria for isolating them,
and the criteria for distinguishing main and secondary
levels, however, it is legitimate to ask what was the
reason for their origin in nature, why all nature
(life included), is not an amorphous whole either
weakly or not at all differentiated, why structures
of greater and less degrees of complexity, and con¬
sequently structural levels, have emerged in the
animate matter of the planet. The answers, naturally,
can still only be hypothetical.

The founder of the theory of systems, Ludwig von
Bertalanffy wrote of the existence of primary regu¬
lating mechanisms in living organisms that operated
along lines of dynamic interaction. That proposition,
however, is not indisputable. Embryonal regulation
is adduced as evidence of it, but the equifinality, i. e.
identical consequences, observable in many embryon¬
al abnormalities, especially in the early stages of
embryonal development, are not quite evidence,
generally speaking, that the principle of feedback
does not operate in embryonal regulation. It is theoret¬
ically very probable that the equifinality is a manifes¬
tation of some sort of integrative mechanisms of a
very high order, organised on a feedback principle
and preserved by selection. In any case it is impos¬
sible to exclude the principle of feedback in individ¬
ual development without special research and to
attach decisive importance to the regulating processes
that von Bertalanffy called dynamic interaction.
Examples of the manifestation of this dynamic
interaction in inanimate nature are even harder to
find. Thus, the cause of the origin of structural

22

levels, i. e. the end velocity of the action of feedback
and the need to limit the fields within which the
feedback principle retains its effectiveness, seems
very general and therefore one that well explains
the structural diversity of the whole Universe.

The exceptional importance of the feedback princi¬
ple in the structural differentiation and the formation
of structural levels is well illustrated by a survey of the
structural levels of organisation of animate matter.
At the molecular level, and in all cellular processes,
the regulations operate through a system of feedbacks
that control the biological processes. These are the
many systems of modifier-genes that switch on the
triggering mechanisms and catalysts of a biochemical
reaction, and the suppressor-genes, on the contrary,
that suppress it. At the ontogenetic level, or level
of the whole organism, the biochemical processes
retreat to the background, and integrative mechan¬
isms then come to the fore that ensure the integrity
and wholeness of the organism. During growth they
are embryonal and growth regulations, in the process
of vital activity and aging they are metabolic ones.
The nervous system plays an immense role in all
these processes, and the feedback principle applies
most fruitfully to it.

Selection operates as a form-determining factor at
the level of the individual, eliminating unadapted or
poorly adapted animal and plant forms through
intraspecies competition. But the results of its opera¬
tion are particularly great at the population level. As
for the laws that govern life at the biogeocoenotic
level, they are not yet fully known. The geochemical
energy of the processes of the circulation and migra¬
tion of chemical elements is of enormous signifi¬
cance. But not only is the energy balance decisive in
the adaptation of various species to one another in
communities of plants and animals, and to the
environment, but intricate forms of selection of some
sort apparently continue to operate at that level. The
role of numerous feedback links during the circula¬
tion and migration of atoms has been demonstrated
by many geochemical studies.

23

We thus come to the conclusion, from all the
abovesaid, that the end velocity of the action of
feedback is the main factor in limiting systems and
giving rise to structural levels. Retarding of feedback
makes a system unstable and so creates a need to pass
to a new structural state of matter in which another
system of feedback links begins to operate.

Everything that is said in the general theoretical
formulations can be illustrated from study of struc¬
tural levels in biology, in which the notion of various
series of such levels is only just beginning to make its
way. Let us take, for a start, the molecular and
cellular level. It is generally postulated that we
are concerned with biochemical laws at that level.
But the strictly structural elements of the interacting
compounds are hardly less important, i. e. the prima¬
ry, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary structures of
protein, the spiral structure of DNA, and finally the
structural elements of the cell. It is these structural
elements, strictly speaking, that are primarily compa¬
rable with the tissue, organ, and ethnogenetic or
organismic levels, since at the latter levels the struc¬
tural, mechanical aspects, i. e. the structural design,
combination of the parts, types of these combina¬
tions, and the relationship of the parts and the whole,
are most important. This line of differentiation,
starting from the simplest chemical compounds,
finishes with the organism as a whole, and among
protozoa, colonies of organisms.

But we can really speak of the comparability with¬
in this trend of the structural levels distinguished.
The highest level can perhaps be taken as the interac¬
tion between organisms, when one penetrates the
body of another and becomes an element of its
structure to some extent. These are parasite organ¬
isms. Either a symbiosis is formed as a result of
their penetration (which, however, seldom happens;
a symbiosis is most often formed through the interac¬
tion of freely living or externally contiguous or¬
ganisms), or a situation of parasitism is created. In
that case, however, we have in mind primarily a
mechanical disturbance of the vital activity of one

24

organism by another, and only that comes into the
context of this trend of differentiation. Such an
important component of an organism as its resistivity,
and such an important disturbance of its vital activi¬
ty as a pathology arising through the mechanical
work of a parasite, can also thus be considered from
the angle of structural organisation reflecting a
differentiation of the organism strictly in space, i. e.
its morphological differentiation.

Another aspect of differentiation—the biochemical
and physiological—is that by which only the molecular
level ordinarily is distinguished, but which also oper¬
ates at higher levels. There is no need to speak special¬
ly about the biochemical processes in the cell; their
immense significance has now been demonstrated by
thousands of studies. But they retain their place as
well at the tissue and organ levels, and at the level of
the organism as a whole. Tissue specialisation, mor¬
phology apart, is primarily expressed in processes of
metabolism, i. e. in biochemical processes. The same
can be said of the organism as a whole; metabolic
processes probably play a paramount role in it, like
physiological integration. In the interaction of two
organisms that gives rise to symbiosis or more often
to parasitism, pathological processes of the poisoning
of one of the organisms take first place, which also
have a biochemical nature. That does not mean, of
course, that the structural levels of physiological and
biochemical differentiation coincide with similar levels
of morphological differentiation, although a partial
coincidence (at the level of the organism, for instance)
cannot be ruled out and is even probable. At that
line of differentiation several independent structural
levels can be preliminarily distinguished; a level of
the synthesis of protein (it will correspond to what is
usually included in the concept of molecular level), a
level of tissue metabolism, level of general metab¬
olism, level of the degradation or breakdown of ge¬
neral metabolism. The level of general metabolism
and the ontogenetic level in morphological differen¬
tiation are the structural levels that coincide, as we
have only just mentioned.

25

The organism is an expression of the discreteness
of living nature. The minimum and maximum scales
of this living discreteness are given, obviously, by
universal constants; the limit of divisibility is set by
the size of atoms and molecules, and the maximum
size by Earth’s field of gravity. But organisms are
never sum totals; they are always united as an aggre¬
gate. The structural levels of such aggregates are a
reflection of another aspect of the differentiation of
living nature, which can be called the population
level.

Populations of plants, animals, and humans have
attracted attention for many years and have been
studied closely from various aspects. The main pa¬
rameters of a population are its size, inner structure,
and the character of its relations with other popula¬
tions. All these accumulate to distinguish a popula¬
tion structural level. The aggregate of uniform popu¬
lations comprising a species should obviously be
distinguished as a species structural level; the aggre¬
gate of heterogeneous populations that constitute a
biocoenosis constitutes a perispecies biocoenotic
level. Finally, the living population of the Earth’s
whole surface, which constitutes the biosphere, we
distinguish as the planetary structural level of ani¬
mate matter. The population aspect of the differen¬
tiation of living nature thus begins with the simplest
and smallest groups of individuals and ends with
the animal and vegetable population of the whole
planet.

These aspects of differentiation do not exhaust
the variety of living nature. One can distinguish
structural levels by the character of the interaction
between objects, by the mode of transmitting and
coding information, by the degree of adaptation to
various conditions of existence, and so on. All that,
however, calls for special research.

One can apparently take as fundamental structural
levels those that reflect a new state of matter, animate
matter in our case, simultaneously by several or many
properties. From that angle the fundamental level
differs from the trivial in reflecting a deeper qualita-

26

tive reorganisation and an essentially new qualitative
state of animate matter. At that level the emergence
of new properties and attributes coincides immedi¬
ately in several directions of its reorganisation and
differentiation.

From that angle the distinguishing of fundamental
structural levels calls for the collective efforts of
many specialists; I shall therefore limit myself to just
a few passing remarks of a very general character.
The accumulation of data that more definitely
reveal the community of the genetic code and prin¬
cipal biochemical reactions at the molecular level in
the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and the specific
structural nature of proteins compared with other
compounds, force us to suppose the real existence
of a fundamental molecular level. That may also be
said about the cellular and tissue levels—every tissue
of multicellular organisms is specialised morphologi¬
cally, and at the same time has a definite physiological
function. The cell constitutes an elementary struc¬
tural-mechanical and functional nucleus of every¬
thing living. An organ is specialised by function and
is therefore also specialised structurally and mechani¬
cally, but it is usually a certain combination of
tissues and does not express biochemical integration.
It is consequently not justified to distinguish funda¬
mental structural levels of organs and systems of
organs.

There is no need to prove the necessity of dis¬
tinguishing a special fundamental structural level
of a whole organism, an ontogenetic level. The
activity of a vast number of systems is integrated at
the level of the organism, and many aspects of diffe¬
rentiation find integrative expression in it. The logical
and actual expediency of distinguishing a population
level is also obvious; it is at that level that natural
selection and population genetic and genogeograph-
ical laws come into full force. The species level
seemingly does not have independent significance,
because the same laws operate within it. It is justifia¬
ble to distinguish an independent fundamental level
of biogeocoenosis in the biosphere, as well as a

27

population one. Populations and biogeocoenoses are
sometimes treated as special superorganisms in
modern biology, but such an approach is unfruit¬
ful in practice and hardly justified theoretically.

Fundamental structural levels can only be quite
objectively distinguished when attention is paid to
the coincidence of the stages of differentiation of
animate matter in several, sometimes many trends.
It seems theoretically justified to distinguish them
according to many different properties that reflect
the development of a new quality; from that angle,
however, the six most fundamental structural levels
within the biosphere are seemingly the molecular,
cellular, tissue, organism or ontogenetic, popula¬
tion, and biogeocoenotic.

How far is isomorphism limited to fields separated
from one another by structural levels? When examin¬
ing this problem from a general point of view, we must
note that isomorphism is common in nature and reflects
very general patterns of its development. The isomor¬
phism of chemical compounds, isomorphism in the
realm of crystals, and the isomorphism of the structure
of plants and animals have been studied many times
both from the standpoint of symmetry and in the pro¬
cesses of growth; its broad occurrence is evidence that
we are dealing with a very common pattern of nature.
Without going into its causes, let us consider it simply
from the angle of the concept of structural levels.

Let us imagine that the Universe is either without
structure or is uniform in its structure, and that it
lacks structural levels. Then one and the same laws of
isomorphism will hold, obviously, at both its lowest
and highest stages, which would mean that the diver¬
sity of natural forms is limited by rigid laws of
isomorphism, beyond which they cannot go. Such a
model contradicts both the observed facts and
dialectical materialist philosophy, which treats
nature as boundless in its development qualitatively
as well as in time and space. The formation of a
greater and greater variety of forms is undoubtedly a
qualitative aspect of nature.

The formation of structural levels makes it possible

28

to avoid monotonous uniformity. Its own laws of
isomorphism operate within each independent
structural level, especially when this level is fundamen¬
tal, and a limit is consequently already set to the
diversity of morphological and physiological dif¬
ferentiation, which is inevitable, given the same laws
of isomorphism at all stages of the evolution of
animate matter. Apart from checking the path of
operation of feedback links, structural levels are also
necessary as a guarantee of natural diversity.

At the molecular level biochemical processes and
phenomena are the basis of differentiation. The role
of spatial differentiation and of the stereochemical
features of biochemical compounds (which largely
determine their properties) is, of course, significant,
but still the molecular level, i.e. mainly the level of
biochemical processes, and the isomorphism of
chemical compounds govern the course of biochem¬
ical reactions and transmutations. It is not so at the
cellular level; structural and mechanical properties
become decisive in the cell. A host of structural
formations have been discovered and studied in the
cell; even protoplasm is not structureless, as was
once thought, but is organised in a certain way.
All that, plus the osmotic pressure within the cell,
create a fundamental structural level in which bio¬
physical patterns predominate. The isomorphism of
biophysical structures and laws operates first and
foremost at that level.

The aggregates of uniform cells are functionally
specialised, and consequently processes of tissue
metabolism are their main characteristic. Strictly
speaking that is also biochemistry, but more complex
than at the molecular level. At the tissue level life
activity is governed by metabolic, physiological
regulations, and isomorphism is expressed in the
isomorphism of metabolic processes. The whole
organism is at the same time a combination of mo¬
lecular, cellular, and tissue processes, but at the
same time is a corpuscular unity of reproduction of
the same level of life and a unity of the actual state and
ontogenesis. The forms of isomorphism peculiar to

29

that level are best studied, and partially explained,
from the standpoint of evolutionary theory. It is
the homological series in heritable variability, dis¬
tinguishable more and more clearly in concrete
studies of various groups of living organisms, and
the analogous organs and similar embryonal adap¬
tations in various groups of animals. None of that, as
in the other cases, is reducible to the preceding
level, but forms an independent level of isomorph¬
ism corresponding to the organism or ontogenetic
structural level.

The population structural level brings to the fore
association of the corpuscular units of the biosphere,
or organisms, and at the same time differentiation of
their number; the various aspects of this differen¬
tiation form trivial structural levels within the fun¬
damental population one. The rate of mutation,
the adaptational value of attributes, the character
of crossing, and natural selection, and the strength
and forms of the last-named, determine the look of
populations, break them down into their component
breeding groups or, on the contrary, raise them into
the rank of species, genera, and bigger systematic
categories. Isomorphism is displayed here in popula¬
tion structure, in what used to be called the forms of
social life in plants and animals but is now designated
by the terms ‘phytocoenology’ and ‘science of
animal communities’. At the biogeocoenotic level
this isomorphism reflects and includes a system of
structural links of communities of organisms with
their habitat. Finally, at the level of the whole
biosphere, the planetary level, there are also forms
of isomorphism that have not yet, however, been well
studied. This would seem to be an isomorphism of
energy and chemical equilibrium of the metabolic
processes of the sum total of biogeocoenoses, i.e.
isomorphic transitions from certain parameters of
energy exchange to others regulated by special
forms of natural selection and, one may suppose,
by some other patterns.

To sum up what we have said about the limits of
isomorphic transitions. Structural levels arise both as

30

the result of the end velocity of the feedback action
and (we would stress) as a consequence of a need to
limit the isomorphism of living nature, as a response
to the evolutionary trend to reveal the maximum
quantitative variety of animate matter.

It would seem at first glancd that any fundamental
structural level should single out a microsystem with
its own links closed. But what system is formed by
all the biochemical reactions taking place in myriads
of cells on Earth’s surface? What system do cells or
tissues themselves form? There are no regular rela¬
tions between the cells and tissues of individual
organisms, and between the biochemical and metabol¬
ic reactions taking place within them; consequently,
they do not form a system. So one cannot say in
general that the special qualitative state of animate
matter marked by a fundamental structural level
inevitably forms a system, and that the boundaries
between these levels are at the same time bounda¬
ries between the vast systems into which animate
matter splits up.

But if all the processes taking place at a certain
structural level do not form a whole system, they do
form an aggregate of systems, which all belong to
one and the same structural level and are consequent¬
ly, in that respect, isomorphic. But do these systems
in fact exist? Are the elements of each structural
level linked by natural connections? It would seem
that they are linked and so form a system. At the
molecular level, for example, any aggregate of biochem¬
ical reactions, ensuring the synthesis of a protein
compound, is a system, since it consists of strictly
repeatable stages of chemical interaction and yields
one and the same result, which means that it is
determined by certain systems of regulation. Every
cell is a system with regular connections within it,
with a very complicated regulation. One can also say
that of individual tissues; they are not only aggregates
but are also systems of uniform cells that ensure the
integrity of physiological reactions at tissue level.
Hundreds of papers and monographs have been
written on the organism as an integral system, in

31

which the systemic character of the individual organ¬
ism is demonstrated from the most varied stand¬
points. And that is obvious even with the most
superficial consideration of the subject; an organism
is an independent whole and at the same time a tre¬
mendous diversity of the biochemical, cellular, and
tissue elements composing it. The systemic character of
populations of the most varied level is demonstrated
by the real existence of genetic barriers separating
them from one another, and the existence of definite
population and genetic parameters characteristic
of each population. The biogeocoenosis is also
systemic, since only the biogeochemical cycle typical
of it takes place in it, and the plants, animals, and
elements of the geographical environment composing
it are in law-governed relations with one another.
Finally the biosphere is a system because it is opposed
as a whole to all the other terrestrial envelopes, and
because the most general laws of the interaction of
animate and inanimate matter are displayed in it.

It will be clear from what we have said that
there is a vast number of systems of a greater or
less degree of uniformity at each fundamental struc¬
tural level. There is no need to list them, because of
their relative similarity. The typical systems of
biochemical reactions at. the molecular level in var¬
ious groups of plants and animals, the cells of mil¬
lions of different organisms, tissues, and organisms
themselves, striking in their diversity, the infinite
populations of various kinds, and finally the so very
numerous biogeocoenoses are a host of systems of
various size and degree of complexity. Structural level
is thus, on the whole, a broader concept than system.

The biosphere itself is the exception. It can be
considered a system of vast proportions. Its sys¬
temic character is obvious in the community of bio-
geocoenotical connections and chemical composition
of living organisms, in the planetary cycles of the
migration and circulation of chemical elements, in
the general law of their regulation through exchange
of energy, and in the immense active role of animate
matter in regulating and directing all processes on

32

Earth’s surface. But the biosphere is individual, and
the planetary structural level is consequently not
many systems like the others, but a single system, and
coincides to some extent with a system of vast propor¬
tions.

Thus, although the biosphere is composed of a few
interacting structural levels, it is at the same time
exceptionally complicated in its structural organisa¬
tion, since each of these levels itself has in turn a
complicated, ramified, hierarchically organised struc¬
ture. Our exposition has demonstrated the hierarchy
of structural levels in the planet’s animate matter and
the most important problems connected with study
of them. It is natural to pass from that to the histor¬
ical dynamics of the biosphere, subsuming under
that the problems of its origin and evolution.

The Origin and Evolution of the Biosphere

Comparatively little attention has been paid in
the many contemporary works studying the bio¬
sphere (which are extremely varied as regards themata
and grasp of the various facts), to the problem of
its origin, because of the obvious complexity of the
question itself and the insufficiency of the facts at
the disposal of science. Since it is a matter of the
earliest stages of our planet, which are still poorly
illuminated by both geochemical and geological data,
information on the primaeval forms of life is accu¬
mulated very slowly, and we shall be limited for a
long time to considering the genesis of the biosphere
from theoretical constructs and indirect facts and
observations, whose significance in the choice of any
one theoretical model may be weighty, or even more,
decisive.

The rationalist approach to the origin of life sug¬
gested independently by the eminent Soviet and
British scientists, A.I. Oparin (1924) and J.B. S. Hal¬
dane (1929), generated a flood of theoretical and
experimental studies whose aim was to exhaust all
conceivable possibilities of the combination of con-

3-294

33

ditions on the forming planet and, having repeated
them in the laboratory, to recreate the stages of the
transition from highly active organic compounds to
the first, simplest organism, even if in general outline.
With Haldane’s exceptional breadth of interests, and
his varied talents, he hardly returned to this problem
during the rest of his long life, but it retained a cen¬
tral place in Oparin’s scientific work to which he
devoted hundreds of studies. The school he organised
made a great many studies all within the context of
the main ideas he proposed as the basis of the ap¬
proach to reconstructing the first steps of life on our
planet. In the end, synthesising both the work of his
pupils and the results of the experiments of many
workers in other countries, he managed to construct
a scheme of the sequence of bio-organic synthesis in
the course of which the carbon compounds occur¬
ring widely in outer space and on the primaeval
Earth could have yielded the first biopolymers, and
they in turn primordial organisms or protobionts.
The latest observations provide additional confirma¬
tion of Oparin’s hypothesis.

Yet, for all that, there are still many questions in
it that remain unanswered as regards some of the
most important aspects of the problem of the origin
of life. The late I. S. Shklovsky (1976) justly pointed
out that it ignored the question of the formation of
the genetic code, i. e. of the paths of living organism’s
self-reproduction which is one of the main features of
animate matter. One can add that its structural
peculiarities also remain unexplained, even in their
simplest form, for example, the origin of membranes,
closely linked with structure, or the asymmetry of
life, about which Oparin himself wrote that the cases
of asymmetric states in inanimate matter did not
provide a possibility of explaining this fundamental
feature of animate matter.

V. I. Vernadsky’s contribution to the study of the
origin of life was immense. How did he pose the
question? And what were the specific features and
originality of his approach that have remained topical
in spite of the immense strides of science in recent

34

decades? I would specially stress that the most signif¬
icant of his many and varied works on this subject
was his paper devoted to formulating the main
principles for studying the origin of life in connection
with the origin of the biosphere (Vernadsky, 1931).
He did not conceive of the origin of life as a single
animate object, as an animate entity. In his view
life was linked with the biosphere from the very
beginning of its genesis, and the problem of its
origin on Earth was at the same time that of the
origin of the biosphere. Life, consequently, originat¬
ed at once in aggregates of varied forms related in
a complicated way with one another and the envi¬
ronment. The systemic character of his view of the
problem can be felt here in all its power.

For my part, I would first speak about the his¬
torical inseparability of the origin of life and the
formation of the biosphere. We now have every
ground for supposing that life arose in a watery
medium, since it would otherwise have been un¬
protected against lethal short-wave ultraviolet ra¬
diation. The existence of water on the primaeval
Earth, suitable for the origin of life, even in small
quantities, raises no doubts in the light of present-
day notions. The concentration of animate matter in
water prior to the formation of the ozone screen,
which arose during the formation of an oxygen at¬
mosphere, must automatically lead us to the con¬
clusion that the biosphere also made its first steps
in a watery medium. Thus, in the earliest times, the
biosphere was spatially uniform and, we may sup¬
pose, structurally impoverished in comparison to to¬
day’s, including only two structural components—
animate matter and inert matter. There are no traces
of previous biospheres, naturally, within this primor¬
dial one, nor of bioinert matter, which took time to
form. We can suppose that the complex, quanti¬
tative structure of life, i.e. its formation in the shape
of a concatenation of organisms rather than as a single
organism, was only possible given an adequate volume
of the medium of life. By that I mean that life could
hardly have arisen in a little pond, or in basins of

3 *

35

small area; the place most suitable would have had to
be the primordial ocean, however small its dimen¬
sions compared with today’s. Animate matter, occur¬
ring within and differentiating in various ecologic¬
al niches, had sufficient time, before coming out
onto land, to fill these niches and form a balanced
state, during which it must be supposed that its
evolution was extremely slow before the expansion of
the biosphere and the coming out into a new, land
environment. Thus, although the biosphere arose
together with life, like life it did not, naturally, arise
in its present-day form, and underwent consid¬
erable modifications before the geological age of
the Phanerozoic, i.e. the epoch of visible life, which
began around 600 million years ago.

It is still unclear how animate matter arose, i.e. how
its structure arose and what was the degree of diversi¬
ty of the elementary forms of life, and also the
apparatus of self-reproduction. The general cause of
the formation of cellular structures, as I have already
suggested, is limitation of the path of the action of
the feedback principle at the level of molecular
ensembles; this principle finds concrete expression, in
any case, as certain calculations indicate, in the ther¬
modynamic advantages of a microstructural system
over a structureless one. As for self-reproduction, and
the genetic code that governs it, its existence in vi¬
ruses allows us to suppose that this fundamental
feature of animate matter arose even earlier than
the cellular level.

The subsequent stages in the formation of the bio¬
sphere’s contemporary structure, i.e. its spread to
land and the formation of its spatial heterogeneity,
and the shaping of its modern structure, are recon¬
structed with no less assumption, and without firm
reliance on definitely established facts. It is supposed
that the first organisms that passed over to photo¬
synthesis were blue-green algae, which began to create
the planet’s oxygen atmosphere; from the earliest
Cambrian period of the Phanerozoic we begin to find
strong traces of land life, which already implies the
existence of an ozone screen defending land animate

36

matter from cosmic radiation. The evolution of
varied forms of life in the Phanerozoic has been
reconstructed with great fullness from the palaeon¬
tological data and is described in detail in any modern
handbook of palaeontology. Without dwelling on
these descriptions, we must note three main circum¬
stances: (a) the sequence of the appearance of various
forms of animate matter in time; (b) the increasing
diversity of forms; and (c) the existence of stable
forms of life. Zoologists have now identified more
than 20 types of animal, while the diversity of
plants is immense. The geological scale of the
Phanerozoic known to us suggests the consistent
forming of ever more complicated forms of plants
and animals as we come closer to the present. The
diversity of animate matter also increased in the
course of geological time, and ever more compli¬
cated, progressive types appeared.

A fundamental description of the movement of
the biosphere in time would be to establish the
sequence of the formation of the structural levels
which we discussed in the previous section. It could
be suggested on purely theoretical grounds that
structural levels arise in a sequence, beginning with
the lowest and ending with the highest, and that
nature evolved from a state of lower complexity
to a higher one. In general that is true.

A less generalised sequence of the rise of funda¬
mental structural levels is now painted in the form
of two stages. Vernadsky’s views on the origin of life
as an intricate complex of organisms and biogenic
conditions are seemingly correct and confirmed by
the whole subsequent development of science. The
biospheric structural level of living nature must
therefore be considered primary, one of the most
ancient. The origin of life must not be treated as the
appearance of the first organism; it can only be treat-
e d as the appearance of an aggregate of organisms.
The biogeocoenotic, organism, and population lev-
e ls then arose, seemingly, together with the bio¬
sphere, and belong to the first ones. The vital activity
°f even the first, simplest organisms was ensured by

37

some aggregate of biochemical reactions; self-copying
was the main thing ensured by them, so that the mo¬
lecular level too must be supposed to be primary.

Things are more complicated with the two other
levels, the cellular and tissue. Until recently it seemed
self-evident that an organism could not exist in any
other form than the cellular, and that recognition of
the organism level led automatically to recognition of
the cellular level. But since the discovery and study
of viruses that assumption has lost its self-evidence.
The first forms of life can apparently be imagined as
some sort of weakly structured organisms that had
not reached the level of a cell in their individual
evolution. The cellular level is thus seemingly second¬
ary, and the tissue level even more so, i.e. specialised
cells appear only in multicellular organisms, and obvi¬
ously are the result of a lengthy preceding evolution.

The sequence of the origin of fundamental struc¬
tural levels has thus, seemingly, to be a two-stage
one. The first stage is the genesis of the primary
levels (molecular, organism, population, biogeo-
coenotic). It is difficult to establish the sequence
of their formation with the necessary certainty, unless
they arose simultaneously. The second stage is that
of the rise of secondary levels (cellular and tissue);
and the cellular level took shape earlier than the
tissue one.

In the general dynamics and mechanism of the
operation of the biosphere that we have discussed so
far, the aggregate of processes and phenomena
united according to a single general attribute has
remained outside our attention, that is to say, their
unity according to some small or significant deviation
of the cycle of the vital activity of animate matter
from the normal. This aggregate of processes and
phenomena includes a vast range of disturbances of
normal vital activity. Their role in the biosphere has
not been fully studied, but there are voluminous
catalogues of various pathological defects in animals
(especially those with cellular structure) and plants in
the many summaries on palaeontology already pub¬
lished. All the processes concealed behind these

38

defects are extraordinarily varied in their causes and
consequences, character, intensity, and territorial
occurrence, but they have one thing in common,
namely that they disturb the normal functioning of
animate matter in the biosphere, interfere with the
natural cycle of the life of organisms and the suc¬
cession of generations, and sometimes lead to the
death of vast masses of animate matter in a very
brief period. The immense plagues of locusts, for
example, that caught Vernadsky’s attention when
he was developing his idea of animate matter and its
planetary role, caused disastrous devastation and
turned vast areas into wilderness for a long time.
What was the sense of those events, and similar ones,
of mass and individual pathologies in the mechanism
of the biosphere? And what was the sense and signif¬
icance of pathology in general in the evolution of
animate matter’s normal vital activity? Only when
we have answered that, even in general form, can we
consider that we have reached understanding of the
dynamics and mechanisms of the life of the biosphere.

From my point of view a general understanding of
the role of pathology in animate matter’s normal
vital activity would be reached if we regarded it as
a fundamental regulating mechanism in the biosphere,
as one of the feedback principles operating on a
planetary scale and, together with the struggle for
existence, countering the inevitable pressure of life.
The progression of reproduction calculated for
various systematic categories of plants and animals, is
very different but, even at the minimum is such that
the whole planet would ultimately be inundated by
animate matter of a certain kind, and in a relatively
short interval of time. Such phenomena as the intro¬
duction of foreign biological information into a cell,
or the introduction of information via a virus are
also among the processes of that category. The
struggle for existence is not, in the main, one of
direct struggle between species and populations,
but of competition understood in its broadest sense;
competition for living space and food resources
puts obstacles in the way of a species’ energy of

reproduction in the form of the energy of reproduc¬
tion of other species. Equilibrium is ultimately
achieved, and is sometimes maintained for quite a long
time, and is disturbed either by a marked change in the
external conditions or by a change in the cycles
of reproduction. In both cases competition between
the various forms of animate matter for the medium
of life and food prevents spread of one of the forms
and, what is particularly important, the diversity
achieved is not eliminated but preserved. Quite
naturally, all forms of pathology, be they genetically
determined anomalies of development, or anomalous
physiological reactions included in the exchange of
genetic material in populations through transmission
from generation to generation, or relatively short¬
term responses to unfavourable influences of the
environment, or, finally, virus infections, form a
powerful barrier (when we regard them as a general
mechanism in the biosphere) in the way of the energy
of reproduction, either reducing it or leading some of
the individuals in populations for good out of the
channel for forming the next generation. The pres¬
sure of reproduction would have to be equally low¬
ered in all forms of animate matter; at the same time
there are no living organisms in nature that would not
suffer from pathological defects of some sort.

The energy of reproduction that determines such
phenomena as the pressure and ubiquity of life
(discussed in great detail by Vernadsky) is a basic
factor in the dynamics of the biosphere since it
extends the nicbes of animate matter, leads at an
early stage to extension of the biosphere itself, and
constantly raises the energy potential of animate
matter in the planet’s mechanism. Even when we are
dealing in a general way with the limitations imposed
on animate matter by this mechanism we can dis¬
tinguish several limiting factors, which also include
the pathological processes just considered. First of
all, I repeat, there are different forms of the struggle
for existence that are expressed in both the concrete
relations of groups of individuals and selective surviv¬
al in accordance with the resilience of the organism.

40

Very detailed classifications of the typical forms of
the struggle for existence have been developed, though
it is now fashionable to omit a detailed survey of the
phenomena of struggle for existence when describing
the mechanism of biological evolution, and to include
it in natural selection. The reason for that is under¬
standable, but it is rather subjective; the concept of
struggle for existence became very compromised in
social-Darwinism, but the phenomenon itself that
underlies it has not been exhausted, and I regard it
as the fundamental mechanism for regulating the
mass of animate matter in the biosphere.

A second regulatory mechanism of this sort consists
in the various disturbances of animals’ behaviour in
conditions of overpopulation. This forms a special
behavioural regulation in the biosphere also directed
against the energy of reproduction. The infertility
of animals in zoos is well known, and is a very stand¬
ard reaction of the living organism to the conditions
of detention in captivity. Ethology, the science of
their behaviour based on observation of animals in
natural conditions, has amassed an enormous stock of
facts which eloquently indicate that when a species is
cramped, lethal fighting breaks out among the males,
forms of behaviour aimed at survival of progeny are
disturbed, and all the mechanisms of biological
competition are in general aggravated, not to mention
that overcrowding leads to infections, and consequent¬
ly the behavioural factor of regulation of the energy
of reproduction merges with that of pathology. Simi¬
lar processes arise as well in conditions of overpopula¬
tion in the vegetable kingdom.

Finally, there is a third regulatory mechanism, viz.,
the pathological processes considered above in more
detail. The energy of reproduction, an active factor
in the biosphere’s growth, dynamics, and develop¬
ment promoting a heightening of its relative weight
on our planet, the struggle for existence, psycho-
physiological behavioural reactions to overpopulation,
and pathological processes operate as a powerful
brake on unlimited expansion of the biosphere.
This probably accounts for the fact that it reached

41

its more or less present-day extent in the first third
of the Phanerozoic, and if it increased later, it did
so extremely slowly.

Patterns of Development of the Biosphere

What is it in the biosphere that governs its dynamics
in time and regulates its functioning in space? That
question is not reducible to a trivial alternative, viz.,
either natural selection of the living or the patterns of
change of the geological and geographical envelopes
of our planet. The biosphere, as we are endeavouring
to show, is a very complex, multicomponent forma¬
tion, and this alone makes it difficult to imagine that
its evolution was monofactorial and its whole func¬
tioning governed in the end by one factor. A diversity
of the mechanisms governing its life and the dynamics
of its changes in time is theoretically very probable
and very likely actually exists, ensuring both effec¬
tiveness of the structural links between its spatial,
structural components and their direction and strict¬
ly co-ordinated development. Such is the general
preamble that can be suggested for a more concrete
survey of the factors in evolution of the biosphere.

Animate matter, which has developed on the mate¬
rial basis of the chemism of our planet, with use of
solar energy, is without doubt the most effective
aggregate in the system of the biosphere, playing a
pre-eminent role in energy exchange and the circula¬
tion of matter, and itself developing intensively as
more and more progressive and complex forms of life
took shape, possessing an exceptional diversity of
functional manifestations at the highest levels of
development. What caused such an exceptional
complexity of the forms of animate matter, their
powerful vital activity, and successive complication
of organisation throughout Earth’s history (confirmed
by many significant series of palaeontological facts,
usually called ‘the palaeontological chronicle’ in
textbooks of geology and palaeontology and books
on Darwinism)? Here we enter a sphere of facts and

42

statements that, in spite of the centuries of discus¬
sion around them continue to be the very centre of
attention of world biological and philosophical
science and the focus of the most sophisticated re¬
search (by observers, experimenters, and theorists)
in various countries, and attractive to followers of
various ideological trends, and that do not leave
readers of various levels of education uninterested. It
is a matter of evolutionary theory, a broad field of
biology in which the factors and mechanisms of the
evolution of animate matter are studied, and which
is variously called, even now, depending on the con¬
tent it is given, Darwinism, Lamarckism, Neodarwin-
ism, Neolamarckism, the synthetic theory of evolu¬
tion, and so on. As many minds as heads, and each
mind belonging as a rule to a theoretical scientist
who claims to be tackling evolutionary questions
from a new angle, have put forward more and more
new ideas and drawn attention to more and more new
combinations of facts. As a result there is hardly
anywhere else that one comes across such contra¬
dictory views, and where the clashes are so sharp.
Without claiming in any way to have exhausted the
Himalayas of evolutionary literature, even in its
general features, I must, in order to answer the ques¬
tion posed about the patterns of the biosphere’s evo¬
lution, throw light at least on the main trends of the
existing hypotheses and, where possible, add a crit¬
ical commentary.

Darwin wrote, in the historical essay prefaced to
On the Origin of Species listing his forerunners in
developing evolutionary theory, that the idea of nat¬
ural selection had seemingly first been put forward
in 1813 by C. Wells, though he had attached limited
importance to it. The fame of the discoverer more
often than not, however, does not go to him who
first formulated a law, but to him who was able to
make it understood by other people, and give it a
really profound grounding. Darwin developed a rigor¬
ous, consistent conception of the evolution of ani¬
mate matter. In all studies of evolutionary prob¬
lems it has always been stressed that the principle

43

of natural selection occupied a central place in his
conception, and that all the most important aspects
of the evolutionary process were explained by it. His
conception differed in principle in that from all other
theories that have set out to explain the evolution of
organisms.

It will readily be understood that natural selec¬
tion is a conceptual model, a philosophical generalisa¬
tion, an idea whose value is determined by how suc¬
cessfully it explains the facts it is advanced to explain.
The idea of natural selection is a very general one,
which explains the diversity of the forms of animate
matter, their adaptability to the conditions of life,
and the directional, progressive complication of
their organisation. But experimental confirmations
of its real existence in organic nature are of course
important. Timiryazev’s famous book Charles Darwin
and His Theory, which first appeared in 1883, and
underwent seven editions in his lifetime, and which
passionately propagated Darwinism and played a
significant role in its winning popularity in Russia,
was perhaps the sole exposition of Darwin’s theory
in the nineteenth century that threw the basic evolu¬
tionary role of selection into such marked relief.

While paying great attention to it, Timiryazev
made several indirect observations on the operation
of selection in nature, viz., examples of change in,
and the adaptation of, separate forms, and their ra¬
tional interpretation by means of the hypothesis of
natural selection. Many direct observations were
also made, naturally, among both plants and animals,
as Darwin’s conception of evolution spread. The
direct evidence of the operation of selection obtained
from irreproachable and essentially indisputable
experiments sustained faith in the boundless power of
natural selection as the main motive force of evolu¬
tion creating both new attributes and new forms.

But throughout the whole history of the develop¬
ment of evolutionary theory hypotheses have been
counterposed to the principle of selection as the main
factor in evolution that drew attention to many other
factors, not only ones of a Lamarckian hue, i.e. exer-

44

cise or disuse of organs (this factor rapidly lost its sig¬
nificance with the development of genetics since it
was convincingly shown that characteristics acquired
during life were not transmitted by heredity), but
also organisms’ internal tendency to perfection, re¬
peated variations in the formation of inherited chan¬
ges, etc. The point lay not just in the struggle of mate¬
rialist Darwinism and idealist anti-Darwinian tenden¬
cies (though there was that), but in the fact that very
many naturalists were not satisfied either by the at¬
tempt to interpret such an intricate process as organic
evolution monofactorially or by the very principle of
selection as the sole driving force of evolution.
Counterarguments were sought by various paths,
including ones within the context of an idealist
outlook, which was evidenced by affirmation of an
‘inner tendency of organisms to perfection’. The
quest itself was inspired, however, by the inquisitive¬
ness of the human mind, its striving not to rest
content with the explanations obtained, and its drive
for ever fuller and uncontradictory interpretations of
the observed facts.

The opponents of the Darwinian conception often,
in the heat of enthusiasm, exaggerated the importance
of observations of phenomena difficult to explain by
selection, or rationally inexplicable by it, advanced
their principles on the role of the decisive factors,
quite denied the role of natural selection, and thereby
greatly weakened their theoretical positions, of course,
if they did not undermine them. The objective de¬
velopment of science called for combination of the
principle of selection (the role of which can be taken
as proved) with some other principle that would
help explain those factors that did not fit into the
conception of selection or were fitted into it by
stretching the point.

Among the many other developments of polyfac¬
torial conceptions of evolutionary development,
berg’s conception of nomogenesis perhaps deserves a
special place. (L.S. Berg was probably the most versa¬
tile Russian and Soviet natural scientist; he made an
immense contribution to many sciences from palae-

45

ontology to geography.) In Greek nomos means law,
and Berg called his conception ‘evolution by law’,
opposing it to Darwin’s theory of evolution by chance.
While not denying the principle of natural selec¬
tion, Berg gave it the secondary importance of
screener of variations formed through the laws of
variability inherent in animate matter. An approach
to evolution was thus realised as a polyfactorial
process; attention was drawn to its morphological
aspects, and reliance was put on the internal pat¬
terns of the structural transformations of animate
matter itself rather than on a phenomenon—natural
selection—external to life proper. Berg’s book on
nomogenesis (1922) evoked very sharp criticism from
consistent supporters of the Darwinian theory, but
was highly valued by the shrewdest of them. The
immense impression it made was largely due not just
to the wealth of its ideas but also to its rare factual
equipping; its author’s erudition was immense. The
main point, however, was of course its successful syn¬
thesis of ideas, its harmonious merging of an apprecia¬
tion of the operation of various evolutionary factors
into a complete picture, and its construction of a
variant of evolutionary theory that was an integral
whole yet displayed great flexibility in interpreting
details of the evolutionary process.

What regularities in the development of animate
matter did Berg draw attention to and base his under¬
standing of evolution on evaluation of? When sum¬
ming up his own many observations, and a vast range
of those of others, he distinguished two groups of
phenomena characteristic of everything living and in
his opinion reflecting the inner trends of the evolu¬
tion of the most varied forms of animate matter: viz.,
(1) the appearance of useful attributes at very early
stages of individual development, and much earlier
than they appeared in phylogenesis; and (2) parallel¬
isms and convergence trends in phylogenesis which
are irreducible to the effect of natural selection and
are a fundamental characteristic in general of the
evolutionary process. In the first case it was a matter
of the sum total of phenomena embraced by the gen-

46

eral concept of pre-adaptation, in the second of the
sum total of phenomena that reflect the general pat¬
terns of the dynamics of the structure of animate
matter. Berg convincingly demonstrated that natural
selection was inadequate in both cases to explain all
the details and evolutionary significance of the changes
arising. The nomogenetic conception of evolu¬
tion, while not rejecting natural selection, brought
another factor to the fore, viz., the directional dynam¬
ic of evolutionary changes. The view that nomogen-
esis, i.e. the theory of the inner trends of evolu¬
tion, and natural selection supplement one another
therefore seems to me to be extremely fruitful.

I have paid great attention to Berg’s work because
it was distinguished from similar work in a marked
way by its wealth of content and really forced us to
think about the polyfactorial character of evolution
and the existence of some sort of element in animate
matter that gives rise, together with and alongside
natural selection, to the progressive direction of
evolution and the whole diversity of living forms.
If we translate Berg’s considerations and conclu¬
sions into the language of today’s science, we can
advance a hypothesis that I have already tried to
provide arguments for (Alexeev, 1979), in accord¬
ance with which directional mutation may be this
organising principle.

Full substantiation of this hypothesis calls for
consideration of the data now amassed in the field of
molecular biology (which is outside the scope of my
book), but the general run of the argument is clear,
even without molecular-genetic reasons for it. The im¬
mense number of studies of the genetic code have
disclosed the exceptional complexity of the picture
of inheritance at the molecular level, much of which
is not yet clear. But it is important that the existence
of such ‘sentences’ in genetic language (if we can so
put it) has been demonstrated, and also of sequences
in the genetic material such as should exist in theory
but are not found in nature. All that is evidence that
the stream of mutation does not break up into sepa¬
rate, disordered trickles but into ordered channels.

47

The constantly mutating genes also, it seems, have
predetermined the structural-dynamic processes and
phenomena in which the direction of evolution is cast
and reflected.

From that standpoint the certain overestimation of
the evolutionary significance of the mutational process
in nature (or spontaneous tutagenesis, as it is called in
genetics) is not without interest. Even the latest ver¬
sion of classical Darwinism which constitutes the
basis of the modern ‘synthetic theory of evolution’,
i.e. that which includes the factual data and theoretical
postulates of genetics, considered mutations for the
most part to be harmful from the standpoint of the
logic of the development of the organism itself and
non-directional, i.e. proceeding without order in vari¬
ous directions. Their evolutionary significance is now
appraised differently; the usefulness of many muta¬
tions is recognised and also the quite high viability of
individuals that possess mutant characteristics; this
recognition forces us to look once more at the ini¬
tial basis of evolution and not to see mutations simply
as neutral material for the operation of selection.

Thus it is not natural selection but natural selection
plus directional mutation that, in our belief, are the
fundamental driving factors of biological evolution
that cause the diversity of everything living and the
discreteness of the main types of plant and animal,
and predetermine the adaptability of animate matter
to the conditions of life, and the direction of its
progressive evolution.

It may be thought that, after photosynthesis had
ensured a strong development of higher forms of life
on our planet, and created the material substratum
for the forming of all its diversity, directional muta¬
tion arose as a function of the living, directed to over¬
coming the increase in entropy in natural inorganic
processes. The whole biosphere is thus a kind of
gigantic laboratory in which there is a continuous
process of the development of anti-entropic impulses
by animate matter, which finally determines the lat¬
ter’s role in the planet’s mechanism. The principle
of natural selection, external to animate matter

48

proper, is unable to explain this function for us.
The principle of directional mutation, it would seem,
does explain it. It increases the stock of information
in the biosphere, generates greater and greater masses
of bioinert matter, and broadens the functional
aspects of the influence of animate matter on the
inert. That is why the biosphere is constantly becoming
more complicated during its history, and that is why
its dynamic is characterised not simply by an increase
in the number of structural elements but also by the
genesis of qualitatively ever newer and more complex
systems within it.

The Transition of the Biosphere to the Noosphere

Vernadsky’s creative thought did not stop at de¬
veloping the problem of the biosphere. To the end
of the life he was publishing work devoted to the
transition from the biosphere to the noosphere, i.e.
the sphere of reason (Vernadsky, 1944). That article,
written and published during the Soviet people’s Great
Patriotic War against Hitler Germany, was one of his
last communications, and like no other demonstrated
his great optimism, and faith in man’s constructive
powers and the final triumph of reason. That is why,
though it did non attract attention at first, it was lat¬
er republished several times and began to be regard¬
ed as the first expression and symbol of a new ap¬
proach to appreciating humanity’s place in cosmos
and its role in the evolution of the Universe.

The term ‘noosphere’, the sphere of reason, and
likewise the term ‘biosphere’, the sphere of life, were
not Vernadsky’s invention; they were suggested in
the 1920s by two French scientists, the philosopher
Edouard Le Roy and the palaeontologist Teilhard de
Chardin. But, as with the biosphere, Vernadsky, having
adopted the term, gave it a different, weighty, genuine
nn g, so that the creation of the theory of the noo¬
sphere is rightly linked with his name. His noosphere,
as the field of application of human forces and sphere
01 mankind’s titanic efforts on the road of progress, is

«~»3

49

a doctrine that has a central place in modern natural
science and philosophy, and has underlain the shaping
of a whole number of new scientific disciplines.

Vernadsky regarded the formation of the noosphere
as a natural process of the growing of the biosphere
into the noosphere, as a further complicating of life
and the appearance of rational life, as the restruc¬
turing of natural processes on our planet under the
impact of men’s creative activity. He stressed the
exceptional importance of humankind as a geolog¬
ical factor. Today’s research has clearly demonstrat¬
ed how great mankind’s role is not only in geologic¬
al processes but even more in all the processes taking
place in the biosphere (e.g. in transforming the vegeta-
tional and animal cover of Earth).

In that connection we can formulate the following
general definition of the noosphere: the noosphere is
the aggregate of the labour that humankind has exert¬
ed and is exerting during its history both on the ex¬
panses of Earth’s surface and in circumterrestrial spa¬
ce, in which the influence of this labour has been and
is being manifested. The noosphere developed together
with humankind, and evolved and became more compli¬
cated along with mankind, as the product of its activity.

Although this concept, as we have already men¬
tioned, has penetrated the most varied fields of knowl¬
edge and has had an unusual effect on them, the term
itself has not entirely caught on, seemingly because of
the irrationality of much of mankind’s action in re¬
gard to nature, and because of the damage done by
technique and industry to natural biogeocoenoses,
now becoming fully disclosed, and the irreversibil¬
ity of many disastrous phenomena in the biosphere
caused by man’s activity. Other terms have there¬
fore been suggested to designate the sphere of reason
and mankind’s aggregate activity, e.g. anthroposphere,
technosphere, and so on. But they seemingly do not
embrace the phenomenon as a whole, and there¬
fore have only had limited acceptance. It is not a mat¬
ter of terminological disputes; however important
they seem at first glance, they are always in the last
analysis of secondary importance. The objective con-

tent and theoretical richness of the concept of the
noosphere are much more important, which is what
makes it so fruitful in science and philosophy.

What are the characteristic features and trends of
development of the noosphere as they have been
manifested in the course of its history? There are
fundamentally four, which reflect its dynamism in
space and time. The first is its spatial extension that
has been going on constantly throughout humanity’s
history, and that has been especially intensive in re¬
cent decades. Though only a small spark of reason on
Earth’s surface at the dawn of its evolution, the
noosphere now embraces not only the whole surface
envelopes of Earth but also outer space, and from
being a terrestrial phenomenon has become a cosmic
one. Its second feature is its marked structural hete¬
rogeneity, even more marked than in its starting
point, the biosphere. That feature seems to be beco¬
ming more marked with time; the point is not only
the extension and geographical redistribution and
intensification of social production during history,
and the character of mankind’s settlement on Earth’s
surface, but also in its increasingly complicated social
organisation. The third characteristic of the noosphe¬
re is its directional activity on all the other envelopes
of the planet, including, and especially, the biosphere;
the purpose of this activity is ever fuller exploitation
of natural resources to satisfy the needs of human
society. The direction of this activity, and its negati¬
ve, elemental aspects, have led in the last analysis to
the ecological crisis that mankind is encountering
today. Finally, the fourth characteristic is the inten¬
sification of all the processes in the noosphere evi¬
denced historically in culture, which has now attained
a colossal scale.

Both animate matter in the biosphere, and human
society in the noosphere are the most mobile compo¬
nents of the system: the objective patterns (that reflect
the class struggle and the revolutionary transition from
tower socio-economic formation to higher one) govern
the dynamics of this component, and condition the
Progressive development of the system as a whole.

2

THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE HOMINID
FAMILY

Morphology and the principles of
anthropogenesis

In the preceding pages I showed that the biosphere
is the planetary phenomenon, and its transition to the
noosphere is a natural process in the history of our
planet. Considering the functions of animate matter
and the patterns of its evolution from a very general
standpoint, I was able to note the main stages in the
evolution of the biosphere itself and the tendencies of
the chronological dynamic of the noosphere, which
arose as a continuation and further development of
the biosphere. The exposition that follows, which is
devotedon the whole to the beginningof thenoosphere,
to the events linked with the origin and very early
history of human society, will naturally be more con¬
crete and will require consideration of data from the
most diverse disciplines that concern the reconstruc¬
tion of history in one way or another: viz., archaeol¬
ogy, ethnography, linguistics, palaeozoology, and
palaeobotany. This broad conglomeration of various
sciences that concentrate on one subject, primaeval
history, is due to the fact that this history is itself
that of the origin and initial development of every¬
thing human (tool use, speech, consciousness, social
institutions, material and spiritual culture). The mod¬
ern history of the human race begins with primitive
history, so that it is in the latter that we may find the
first sources of the phenomena and processes that
constitute the content of human activity.

Man has travelled a long road of evolution not only
as a social being but also as a biological species; his
appearance and evolution are linked not only with

52

the development of culture but also with the protract¬
ed alteration and perfecting of biological organisation
that created the preconditions for every functional
development, and for the duration of every level.
Unless we understand man’s biological evolution we
cannot understand either the origin or the evolution
of the early stages of his culture, so that anthropology,
the science of the physical peculiarities of man and
his ancestors, must be added to the list of disciplines
given above to help us penetrate the secrets of the
very distant past of humankind. As a science anthro¬
pology has many different definitions; the anthropol¬
ogists of the last century often wrote about it as the
natural history of the human species, but now it is
more often defined as the science of the physical
varieties of man in space and time. The point, how¬
ever, is not the formal definition, important as it may
seem to specialists; the main point is that anthropo¬
logy studies the physical type of man and its dyna¬
mics in time and its varieties in space, and tries
to discover the reasons for these changes, so that it
provides rich material for judging the structure and
chronological changes in his ancestors, and is a power¬
ful help for studying primaeval history.

It is quite pertinent here to speak briefly about the
store of information that anthropology has at its
disposal about very ancient and early man, about the
facts on which it relies, and about the comparative
correlations by which we can judge the morphology,
and in part the physiology, of man’s ancestors. I say
‘in part the physiology’ because the morphological
information at our disposal is in the main information
about form and structure, while the rare possibilities
of judging the functions of ancient man are only realis¬
able through indirect observations by analogy with
the anthropoid apes and modem man. The part of
anthropological science specially concerned with
study of the ancient population is usually called
palaeoanthropology. What is its relation to anthropo-
genesis or the theory of the origin of man? Anthro-
Pogenesis, as a subdivision of anthropology, studies
man’s ancestors, while palaeoanthropology concerns

53

1

itself with the ancient population in the broad sense
of the term; with that understanding of the dividing
line between these fields, palaeoafithropology covers
a broader area and includes anthropogenesis as a
special section. In other words, we can put it thus:
according to the quite justified tradition rooted in the
Soviet literature, anthropogenesis is understood as
study of man’s ancestral forms, while palaeoan-
thropology is understood as study of populations of
fossil man belonging already to the modern species.
In the language of archaeological periodisation the
approximate boundary of the origin of the modern
species of man can be taken as the appearance of the
Upper Palaeolithic technique of fashioning stone
tools. This arbitrary boundary between anthropo¬
genesis and palaeoanthropology is the one I shall
employ hereafter.

A few years ago I published a survey of anthropo¬
logical sources, i.e. of material and data now at the
disposal of scientists (Alexeev, 1979), but I did not
then pay special attention to anthropogenesis. I must
now stress that the immediate, direct sources at the
disposal of anthropogenesis are wholly and complete¬
ly morphological (as is clear from that survey), and
relate to one system of the human organism, viz.,
the skeleton. The separate observations available on
the development of the musculature are made from
study of the skeleton, i.e. the points of attachment oT
muscles, the distribution and character of rough
spots on the surface of the bones, etc. In order to
understand how convincing the reconstructions are that
anthropologists suggest for the historians of primitive
society, and which reflect the level of our present
knowledge of the biological nature of man’s ances¬
tors, we must therefore make a detailed acquaintance
with the peculiarities and state of preservation of the
finds of man’s fossilised ancestors. The vast number o:i
descriptions of separate finds have fortunately been ca¬
talogued several times; the latest catalogue is also the
fullest (Oakley, Campbell, Mollison, 1967-75), although
it is already becoming outdated as regards African
finds, which have been particularly rich in recent years.

54

The main problems of anthropogenesis are treated
rather dogmatically, in my view, in many popular
books and textbooks on the history and archaeology
of primitive society. By that I do not mean theoret¬
ical dogmatism, or blind following of certain tradi¬
tional theoretical canons, and preconceived exposi¬
tion and interpretation of the facts, but the convic¬
tion with which disputed propositions are often set
out. Man’s fossil ancestors are described with a full¬
ness as if the author had seen them alive many times
and even studied them as an anthropologist studies a
modern population. But much in anthropogenesis is
vague, the facts are few, like any palaeontological
facts, or rather are inadequate for confident interp¬
retation of many problems, and one must not lose
sight of that when dealing with the anthropogenetic
problematic. To save the reader from excessive
credulity and equally from empty, unfounded scep¬
ticism, I shall deal as before as briefly as possible with
those matters that face the investigator of palaeoan-
thropological material chronologically related to the
earliest stages in the evolution of humankind, and the
possible limits that stem from it in relation to palaeo-
anthropological reconstruction.

But first a few words about the preservation of
skeletal remains, i.e. of the material that is all, as I
have said, that comes into the hands of anthropolog¬
ists. We do not know of any palaeolithic burial grounds;
the skeletons of fossilised people of that epoch
occur in separate burials discovered not as the conse¬
quence of a special search but as the result of archae¬
ological excavation of palaeolithic sites in caves and
open places. Very often there were no specialists
present when they were found who were well acquaint¬
ed with the anatomy and preservation of the bones,
so that many parts of the skeleton were lost or
completely ruined. But such material constitutes
the minority. The bulk of the finds of great antiquity
are made accidentally during earth work and palaeon¬
tological and geological pitting; but even in places
rich in bone remains success depends on the diggers’
coming across thick bone-bearing horizons. A special

55

branch of science, taphonomy, has taken shape within
palaeontology, concerned with establishing the pat¬
terns of the burial of remains of extinct organisms
in geological strata, and as a direct consequence, the
conditions of their discovery during planned palaeon¬
tological searches (Yefremov, 1950; Behrensmeyer
and Hill, 1980). Anthropological taphonomy does
not yet exist, but it is already clear in science (1) that
finds of forms directly preceding man and of very
ancient men occur together with a fauna of other
mammals, and (2) that they are distinguishable
because of the fragility of the skeleton, by the mor¬
phologically unbalanced character of transitional
forms in general, rarity, and extremely poor preserva¬
tion. Most often they are fragments of skulls (lower
jaws and teeth; natural casts of the interior of the
skull or endocranium); finds of complete skulls with
the facial bones and parts of the skeleton are especial¬
ly very rare.

We cannot say any more optimistically whether the
data are geographically representative, i.e. whether
we can see a reflection in them of the whole wealth
of the biological varieties within the most ancient
humankind. Archaeological excavations began in
European countries earlier than on the other con¬
tinents; geological investigation, search for, and mining
of minerals began there too, so that many finds of
bone remains of man’s ancestors belonging to early
chronological periods were found in Europe. But
newer and newer discoveries are also being made in
Europe, and many regions there remain unstudied.
Africa has yielded up many of its palaeontological
secrets, and very rich sites have now been found there,
but they remain tiny islands of scientific work in the
field of the origin and evolution of African forms of
the earliest men and prehominids in the immensity
of vast regions of savannah, plains, deserts, and forests
that are quite unexplored, but were undoubtedly
inhabited and therefore have many palaeontological
riddles hidden in them. The two Americas and Aus¬
tralia were settled comparatively late by man, and
there are no grounds for expecting early finds in them.

56

Table of the Relation and Absolute Dates of the Stages
in the Evolution of Ancient Man’s Morphology
and Culture

Historical

stage

Archaeological

stage

Evolutionary

stage

Absolute dates
(thous. yrs.)

primitive
proto horde

Early stages of
Lower Palaeolithic

Australopithecus

4 000 000-
about 2 000 000

Early primi¬
tive horde

Later stages of
Lower Palaeolithic

Pithecanthropus

about 2 000 000—
200 000

Developed

primitive

horde

Middle

Palaeolithic

Neanderthal

man

200 000-40 000

Primitive

community

Upper Palaeolithic
Mesolithic,

Neolithic and

Early Bronze

Modem man

40 000-5000

The expanses of Asia—in principle a no less promising
palaeontological Eldorado than Africa for establish¬
ing the human genealogy—are vast, but what do we
know from them? Only a few finds, concentrated in
a few regions. The general picture of anthropogenesis
is thus reconstructed from quite incomplete data (both
geographically and chronologically); the gaps are
filled in by more or less probable hypotheses.

Poor preservation and geographical and chronologic¬
al incompleteness are not all. A vital defect in the in¬
formation is the singleness of the finds in each place.
I have already mentioned the absence of information
about palaeolithic burial grounds at our disposal; it is
very probable that there were none, just as there are
no burial grounds of animals, and that each dead
person was buried separately, if he was buried at all.
When the physical features of a find are spoken
about in the literature on anthropogenesis, and con¬
clusions of some sort are drawn about their physical
structure, we must remember that it is a matter, as a
nde, of a separate individual in each case. But as I

57

know from my own practical experience (science
is not needed for it) individuals differ very markedly
from one another, and we can get a group portrait of
the local group, or people, race, etc., to which the
individuals belong only from data on many individuals.
The Negroes in Africa, Chinese and Mongols in
Asia, Russians and French in Europe have infinite
variations of physical features; by summarising them,
we get some kind of generalised portrait corresponding
to the average type. That is the way that fullness and
objectivity are achieved in an anthropological de¬
scription, but the latter is also complicated by the
procedure, since hundreds and thousands of individ¬
uals are required in order to obtain such a descrip¬
tion. I shall speak about that in more detail below.
But in order to picture graphically what we have to
deal with when we compare the separate fossil forms
of man, we need mentally to create a quite artificial
situation; let us study a Russian and a Frenchman
(both taken quite at random) and establish a set of
anthropological differences between the popula¬
tions of Eastern and Western Europe from the dif¬
ferences between them. Quite obviously we will get
very approximate observations only remotely related
to genuine anthropology, instead of objectively scien¬
tific results. The morphological differences between
the separate fossilised forms of man’s oldest ancestors,
true, are greater as a rule than those between separate
local races within the human family, so that they are
reflected more clearly in the individual descriptions,
but our example demonstrates, all the same, how
difficult it is to work in the field of anthropogenesis
and how hard it is to achieve the slightest convincing
results.

The poor preservation and weak geographical re¬
presentativeness, and the singleness of the finds
impose strict methods on the work of the anthropol¬
ogist who is trying to lift the veil from man’s biolog¬
ical past. How can he allow for these ways and meth¬
ods and penetrate the evolutionary changes in man’s
ancestors, and the reasons for them? The standard
modes of measurement adopted in anthropology can

yield very little in this respect because of the non¬
standard character of the material itself—the fragmen¬
tariness of the bones and the absence of many of the
anatomical points on which standard measurements
are made. When studying the fragments of fossilised
skeletons, therefore, every specialist usually pro¬
poses his own system of measurement so as to have
comparative data, and tests it on other finds. The main
thing in any morphological study of fossil skulls and
skeletons is still scrupulous description allowing for
the special character and structural peculiarities of
the finds. Such descriptions fill hundreds of pages
in books on anthropogenesis, and these pages, together
with large-scale photographs, are an invaluable source
of information on the physical organisation of man’s
ancestors. Quite a full idea of the metric charac¬
teristics and morphological features of the various
finds on which our knowledge in this field is based
can be drawn from a number of the latest summaries,
which also contain a detailed bibliography (Alexeev,
1978; R.Leakey, M.Leakey, Behrensmeyer, 1978;
Wolpoff, 1980).

But all this abundance of detailed observations of
the morphology, and the figures obtained from
measurements, are only valuable when one can extract
information of a higher order from them, i.e. about
the genetic links of the separate territorial and chron¬
ological groups of fossil man, the main trends in
their morphological change, and the factors govern¬
ing it. Everything in this is largely done by analogy
from study of the contemporary population, for which
a whole system of operations has been worked out
for interpreting and employing the results of primary
research. But the singleness of the finds mentioned
above poses a specific problem, viz., how to pass
from the individual descriptions and measurements to
a group reconstruction and get information not about
the individual features of the concrete find being stud¬
ied at the moment, but also of the group of fossil
men to which it belonged. The main thing in anthro¬
pogenesis is therefore to single out the typological,
!-e. those morphological structures and individual

59

attributes that are not significant at the individual
level but are included in the set of distinguishing
features characteristic of the species varieties of
man’s oldest ancestors. The differences between
them, as far as we are able to satisfy ourselves, are
considerably greater than those within modern
mankind, and that facilitates search for group typolog¬
ical differences. The main method in this case con¬
sists in a comparative morphology study of forms
belonging to chronologically different times, compar¬
ison of the trends thereby distinguished with the
anatomical differences in the series ‘modern pri¬
mates—fossil hominids—modern man’, and in establish¬
ing a general evolutionary dynamic for the transition
from primates to men. Only then are the varieties
within chronologically more or less simultaneous
forms assessable; the scale of the assessment is again
the difference between modern primates and groups
of modern humankind.

The road to understanding the true historical, ge¬
netic relationships between the separate chronologi¬
cal and local groups of man’s fossil ancestors, as we
see, is long and strewn with many difficulties. But
theoretical awareness of these difficulties makes it
easier to interpret the comparative morphology data
in the evolutionary aspect, facilitates the concrete
morphological observations that constitute the basis
of anthropogenesis, and help formulate the evolu¬
tionary problems and interpret the factors of forma¬
tion, i.e. the driving forces that governed the restruc¬
turing of the morphological organisation of man’s
ape-like ancestors into the morphology of mod¬
ern man.

The Criteria of Man

Countless attempts have been made to define man’s
place in nature. If we ignore the still existing philosoph¬
ical, abstract speculations, the problem of distin¬
guishing the fundamental property in which the rad¬
ical features of man and human society would be
reflected, has faced scientific thought ever since man’s

60

animal origin was established; or rather, while this
problem had arisen earlier, it was only after man’s
animal origin had been established that it acquired
the necessary concreteness and began to be treated
as a matter coming within the province and compe¬
tence of scientific knowledge. The first researchers
(Darwin, Karl Vogt, and Thomas Huxley) pointed
out several anatomical criteria (from their stand¬
point decisive) for distinguishing man from the animal
kingdom. Darwin himself, in his The Descent of Man,
and Selection in Relation to Sex, published in 1871,
which summed up his views on anthropogenesis,
considerably increased the list of comparative anatomy
differences between man and animals. Their number
is now several hundred.

It is difficult to systematise the attempts to define
man’s place in nature, since the complexity and philo¬
sophic interest of the problem generate views on it
from the most varied standpoints. Two trends in the
history of its scientific discussion are specially impor¬
tant for my theme. The first stems from man’s special
nature compared with the whole organic world, as
a social creature, and as a fundamentally new phe¬
nomenon in the history of our planet, bringing
into the world thought, language, and social rela¬
tions, and exerting an active influence on nature,
in short as the creator of civilisation and all its at¬
tributes. With that approach man becomes the centre
of attention, not in himself, but as a particle of
society; society itself comes to the fore as a single
whole and is opposed to all the rest of nature. Human
society is regarded as a definite social and natural stage
in the development of all matter and the Universe,
comparable with the preceding stages of evolution of
matter and its form of motion.

The sources of that view of the place of man and
the human race can already be found in antiquity. In
the scientific literature of modern times it was
clearly expressed by the famous French anthropol¬
ogist Armand Quatrefages de Breau (1864), one of
the founders of anthropology in France. Speaking
almost on the eve of Darwin’s literary formulation of

61

evolutionary theory, and waging a sharp polemic with
Thomas Huxley, Quatrefages singled out man in a
special, independent kingdom on a level with heaven¬
ly bodies, the kingdom of inorganic nature, or the
kingdom of minerals, and the vegetable and animal
kingdoms. Himself a zoologist, anatomist, and anthro¬
pologist, he did not shut his eyes to man’s peculiarity
in comparative anatomy, but saw it primarily in lan¬
guage, conscious activity, and social life rather than
anatomy. When Darwinism was being substantiated
and was flourishing, and at the time of the boom in
comparative anatomy research stimulated by it,
Quatrefages’ views were appraised as anti-evolu-
tionary, and even as directed against progressive
science. It was thus overlooked that he had based
himself on the whole aggregate of human culture and
its effect on the face of our planet, rather than on
man’s morphology, and suggested distinguishing all
humanity and its gigantic effort in transforming our
planet as a special kingdom, and not man as a separate
organism and zoological species. Quatrefages, it can
be said, expressed in the language of contemporane¬
ous science the idea of the exclusiveness of man that
has passed through all European philosophy in one
form or another. As the idea of the divine nature of
man it figured for centuries in theological treatises,
giving way later to the quite sober, realistic view of
the power of human reason and its transforming ef¬
fect on nature.

Over the past 30 or 40 years, literally before our
eyes, a theory of the noosphere, or sphere of reason,
has taken shape in the philosophical and scientific
literature, as already mentioned, a sphere that is dis¬
tinguished as a new envelope of our planet that arose
with the advent of man and now embraces almost all
the other envelopes. I pointed out above that this is
not only a scientific conception but also a marvel¬
lous prevision of the future power of mankind in
which a world outlook imbued with optimism found
reflection. With man’s entry into outer space that
prevision has been brilliantly justified, the boundaries
of the noosphere have been extraordinarily extended,

62

and it has been converted into a cosmic phenomenon.
Discussion of relatively partial matters now has a
major place in the works of philosophers, astrono¬
mers, sociologists, and theorists of astronautics that
stem directly from the theory of the noosphere, as I
have already said, namely the potential extension of
its bounds to the Universe, the general reasons for the
rise and patterns of development of various noo-
spheres in the conditions of different celestial bodies,
the possibilities of contact, and so on. Quite obvious¬
ly, with that line of thought and definition of human¬
ity’s place in the Universe according to the aggregate
of the planetary and cosmic effects of his activity,
Quatrefages’ distinguishing of humankind as an inde¬
pendent kingdom on a par with the animal, vegetable,
and mineral kingdoms, is of course quite inadequate.
From the new point of view, just mentioned above,
the human race can and must be counterposed to
all the rest of matter, since its active effect on it is
immeasurably greater than that of animate matter,
for example, on geological processes. This counter-
posing is a truly philosophic approach to appraising
man’s place in nature in the broad sense of the term
and the only correct one. All other narrower approaches
suffer from an underestimation of man’s quali¬
tative distinguishing features as a social being, and of
humankind as a planetary and cosmic phenomenon.

At the same time attempts to find a place for the
manifestation of separate aspects of human essence
and activity in Earth’s history are possible and legit¬
imate. It is also legitimate to compare man’s consci¬
ous activity and the instinctive actions of animals, only
in that case a difference in principle can be demon¬
strated between them; it is also legitimate to equate
the anatomical structure of man and animals in
order to bring out their morphological similarity
and to pass from that to establishing the genetic
kinship and differences. In the latter case one must
speak of the anthropological approach to defining
wan’s place in nature, more narrowly, within the
limits of the organic world, to establishing his sys¬
tematic rank within the framework of the biological

63

classification, and to singling out his comparative
anatomy peculiarities. The history of the anthropolog¬
ical approach to evaluating man’s place in the organic
world should seemingly be begun with Linnaeus,
who suggested the first successive classification of
plants and animals and singled out an order of pri¬
mates (Linnaei, 1758). Within that order he distin¬
guished a genus Homo, in which all modem human ra¬
ces have been classed (one species, sapiens seu diurnus,
rational or daylight) and the anthropoid apes, and
also the mythological caudate or tailed, or nocturnal
men (another species sylvestris seu nocturnus, forest
or nocturnal). A hundred years later Thomas Huxley
demonstrated that man’s anatomical features did not
come within the framework of the criteria of genera
and should be raised to the level of family (Huxley,
1863). Since then a special family of Hominids has
been distinguished with a genus Homo within it, in
which modern man (Homo sapiens) is classed, and
has passed firmly into the anthropological literature.
The term itself had been proposed almost 40 years
earlier by John Gray (1825).

I think it necessary to stress specially that the two
approaches to appraising men’s peculiarities mentioned
above (the anthropological and the philosophical) are
essentially different. They stem from largely differ¬
ent criteria and have a different aim. If we ignore the
particular details, it is even legitimate to say that the
object of consideration with the philosophical ap¬
proach is mainly society and its planetary and cosmic
place, though rather schematised, while with the
anthropological approach it is mainly man and his
biological features. The introduction of elements of
biology into appraisal of the place of the human race
in nature ascribes less significance to its specific social
features. It is impossible to reduce everything achie¬
ved by human society and its culture to features of
comparative anatomy, and to appraise them from the
standpoint of zoological or anthropological systema-
tics. That vulgarised path has suffered fiasco many
times in the history of human thought; in its extreme
expression it leads to social-Darwinism and racism.

64

The other path is also unjustified and leads to a con¬
fusing of concepts; it is the line of direct introduction
of elements allowing for man’s social nature, labour
activity, etc., into appraisal of the characteristic fea¬
tures of his origin as a biological species.

It is difficult when we proceed from those consid¬
erations to accept as correct the idea common in the
anthropological and archaeological literature that
the basic criterion, and even in essence the sole one,
for distinguishing a family of hominids from the order
of primates is that of tool use. The criteria for distin¬
guishing the family, based on the morphological
traits that have been mostly influenced by labour also
raise doubts. With that approach there is an attempt
to lump together the morphological and the instru¬
mental, in other words the anthropological and
philosophical criteria of the human race. That at¬
tempt, however, suffers from the same shortcoming, a
confusion of concepts and the introduction of asocial
factor into the distinguishing of a biological category.
At first glance the family of hominids is distinguished
by morphological traits, but in fact it is based in the
last analysis on the same criterion of tool use.

Thus, to sum up what has been said, and try to
draw a line from the anthropological standpoint
between the animal kingdom and man as a biological
species, it is therefore necessary, from my point of
view, to start from the morphological facts and ob¬
servations proper, i.e. from the scale of the morpholog¬
ical defferences between man and the ancestral forms
closest to him, rather than from the fact of the fashion¬
ing or not of tools. In other words, the dividing
line of the family of hominids should be drawn with
reliance on morphological criteria and not on others,
and the family itself should be distinguished primarily
as a biological community, and not some other.

The Hominid Triad and the Initial Form
of the Evolution of Hominids

When we speak of the primary morphological dif¬
ferences between the family of hominids and the oth-

5-294

65

er families of the order of primates, we must first of
all name erect gait, adaptation of the hand to fine
manipulations with opposition of the thumb, and a
large highly developed, relative to the rest of the
body, brain. One way or another these attributes have
always figured in the description of the Hominidae fam¬
ily for several decades now, but with a different
degree of importance attached to them. The discus¬
sion that took place in August 1964 at a symposium
devoted to the boundary between animals and man,
organised at the VII International Congress of Anthro¬
pological and Ethnographical Sciences in Moscow,
showed that some workers supplemented them with
other features; all the same the complex, ‘erect gait
(sometimes called bipedalism or orthograde in the an¬
thropological literature)—free upper extremities—a
developed brain’, remains basic. Frederick Engels had
written about the immense importance of the develop¬
ment of erect gait for the transition from ape to man,
and for the appearance of other human features
(above all the other two attributes of this complex).
One can call the complex the hominid triad. True, a
nihilistic attitude to it is also found in the modern li¬
terature, the brilliant novel of Jean Bruller (Vercors)
Les animaux denatures eloquently and convincingly
demonstrated that, but that trend of scientific and
philosophical thought still has a subordinate place.

The finds and research of recent years made it
possible to differentiate this triad, and to indicate the
sequence of the formation of separate distinguishing
features of the Hominidae in anthropogenesis. In prac¬
tice it could already be thought, with discovery of the
first brain case of Pithecanthropus at the end of the
last century, that erect gait was a comparatively early
acquisition of hominids, since the thigh bone discov-
ered with the brain case hardly differed from a modern
one. That seemed improbable for a long time, how¬
ever, because of belief in parallelism of the transforma¬
tions of all the systems of the human body during
anthropogenesis, which was based on a too straight¬
forward interpretation of the theory of evolution.
Many attempts were therefore made to find evidence

66

in comparative anatomy for imperfect erect gait in
man’s ancestors, which later proved unsound. We can
now take it as firmly proved that the anatomical
features that used to be interpreted as evidence of
the incompleteness of developed erect gait, and of
an inadequately balanced gait on semi-straightened
lower extremities, have a much more convincing
explanation from the functional standpoint (Khrisan-
fova, 1966, 1978).

A weighty argument in favour of fully formed bi-
pedalism at the stage preceding Pithecanthropus was
the finds of Australopithecus in South Africa. Bones
of the extremities were not discovered with the first
find in 1924, but the subsequent discoveries of bone
remains oi Plesianthropus and Paranthropus have filled
that gap. The hominid structure of the pelvises
and long bones of the extremities oi Paranthropus and
Plesianthropus surprisingly indicated very definitely
that Australopithecus had a well balanced orthograde
gait and that movement in an erect position was no
less usual for them than for modern man (see, for
example, Yakimov, 1966). The structure of the
preserved foot bones is evidence of the same (see,
for example, Bunak, 1954). When we remember that
Pithecanthropus used to be considered the first man
(and still often is in popular literature) the origin of
erect gait and an erect posture need to be dated to an
earlier stage and not to that of the predecessors of the
first man. For a long time this stage was chronologi¬
cally indeterminate; Australopithecus travelled from
the Early Pleistocene and even Late Pliocene to the
Middle Pleistocene, but now the stage, it seems, has
acquired definite outlines. The earliest forms of Aus¬
tralopithecus must be synchronised with geological
strata of the Upper Villafranchian, i.e. to the end of
the Pliocene in accordance with the old views, or to
the very beginning of the Quaternary period in accord¬
ance with the modern tendency to put the Villafran¬
chian stage in the latter (Oakley, 1964;Ivanova, 1965).
Assuming full formation of erect gait in Australopi¬
thecus it can be ascribed an older age, and its appear-
ance related to the Lower Villafranchian, and proba-

bly to an even earlier time; the restructuring of loco¬
motion is difficult to imagine otherwise than as an
evolutionary process requiring a long time.

The finds of the Leakey family in the Olduvai
Gorge east of Lake Victoria in Africa, around which
there are still many disputes, are even more demon¬
strative in this respect. The most interesting discovery
at Olduvai is that which Leakey called Prezinjan-
thropus, since it could be quite fully characterised
morphologically not only from skull bones but also
from a partially preserved skeleton of a hand and foot,
and also a tibia and a fibula. The skeleton of the lower
extremities of Prezinjanthropus is particularly impor¬
tant for my theme. From the distinct instep, the posi¬
tion of the big toe pressed to the other toes, the struc¬
ture of the talocrural articulation, and many other
morphological features, one can judge the appearance
of erect gait in Prezinjanthropus. We know that
Prezinjanthropus is synchronous in geological age with
the earliest Australopithecus, or lived even earlier.
This find suggested a very remote transition of man’s
ancestors to erect carriage, occurring somewhere at
the turn from the Tertiary to Quaternary period. No
less important from the aspect interesting me was the
later discovery of long bones of the extremities and
of foot bones at Koobi Fora on the eastern shore of
Lake Turkana (formerly Lake Rudolf), made in the
main by Louis Leakey’s son Richard. Remains have
been discovered of several individuals of different
sex and chronological age, but representing the same
early stages of human genealogy (Walker, R.Leakey,
1978). The morphological description of them, quite
detailed measurements, and accurate drawings (R.Lea¬
key, M. Leakey, Behrensmeyer, 1978) show that these
forms also differed little in the structure of the bones
of the lower limbs from later hominids and moved in
an upright position.

Was this transition accompanied with a substantial!
restructuring of the other attributes of the hominid
triad? And did the development of upright walking
coincide with a marked increase in the size of the brain
or its marked perfecting? It was still difficult to answer,

that unequivocally a few years ago. The idea of a ‘ce¬
rebral Rubicon’, distinctly formulated by Sir Arthur
Keith (1929), which was generally accepted for many
years, expressed an intuitive, theoretically unsubstan¬
tiated, but quite definite idea of the existence of a sharp
line between the size of the brain of anthropomorphs
(if one can so express it) and the first men. This Rubi¬
con was speculatively fixed at 800 cubic centimetres;
forms with a greater brain volume were classed as
human, while those with a smaller volume had to be
classed as anthropomorphs. This figure for the boun¬
dary line, however, was the result of a certain overes¬
timation of the brain volume of Australopithecus
typical of the first period of its study. The latest
research has convincingly shown that there is practi¬
cally none greater than 500 to 550 cubic centimetres
among them (Tobias, 1967). For Prezinjanthropus a
volume of 680 cubic centimetres was obtained at
first (Tobias, 1964), again rather less than the ‘cere¬
bral Rubicon’. But that, too, proved an overestimate;
Robinson (1965, 1966) obtained around 600 cubic
centimetres, Kochetkova (1969) even less, around
560 cubic centimetres. Yet Australopithecus and
Prezinjanthropus (as was shown above) were upright
walking forms. A boundary line of brain volume of
800 cubic centimetres badly corresponds with those
observations.

At the same time this line demonstrates a marked
lag between development of the brain and the appear¬
ance and perfecting of upright walking, and a chrono¬
logical unevenness in the origin of the attributes
composing the hominid triad. In the development of
the hand (about which I shall speak below), an equal¬
ly distinct delay is observed in the forming of all the
morphological features that bring it as close as pos¬
sible to the functional possibilities of modem man’s
hand. Thus, if one is to speak seriously about a mor¬
phological Rubicon between anthropomorphic pri¬
mates and man, and about the first and oldest differ-
en ce between them, it is initially manifested in the
development of upright walking and not in the de-
Ve lopment of the brain and hand. It is therefore

legitimate, and perhaps only logical, while confining
ourselves to morphology, to rely precisely on upright
walking as the main, primary attribute of hominids.
Uryson (1965) has argued the value of this attribute in
detail. The first to suggest including Australopithecus I
in the family of hominids were S.L. Washburn (1951),
G. Heberer (1951), and W. Le Gros Clark (1952).

To sum up, the earliest and most distinct attribute
of the oldest ancestors of man, which finally took
shape at the end of the Tertiary and beginning of the
Quaternary periods, was upright walking. It has no
analogy either among primates or in the animal king- ,
dom, and provided grounds for the further recon¬
struction of the whole morphology. Separate reports
on anthropoid apes’ episodic locomotion in an erect
posture do not alter the picture, since primates, even
anthropomorphic, resort to it only by chance (simi¬
larly it is also not legitimate to consider the chance
use of sticks and stones by apes as purposive labour
activity; I shall speak specially about that in another 1
chapter). The restructuring of morphology associated
with upright walking gives grounds, from the systemat¬
ic point of view, to distinguish a family of hominids ]
by precisely that attribute.

The evolution of the order of primates, now recon¬
structed with a high degree of accuracy from palaeoan-
thropological remains, and also from the results of
thorough-going comparative anatomy and genetic
study of its modern members (Osman Hill, 1953-74;
Goodman, Tashian [Eds.], 1975), could be the
subject of quite a number of interesting books, so di-1
verse are the forms of apes now living, and so different
are the conditions to which they are adapted, and so
unique and rich the shades of their behaviour. I do
not have the space to set it all out; it would be neces¬
sary to go thoroughly into the special details, and in
the end to go far beyond the framework of my expo¬
sition determined by the inner logic of the develop¬
ment of the biosphere and the origin from it of the
most important component of the noosphere, viz.,
humankind. At the same time it would be methodo¬
logically wrong to lose sight of the background formed

70

by information on primates when reconstructing
the various aspects of the morphological organisa¬
tion and behaviour of man’s ancestors. Here I shall
only touch on one of these aspects, endeavouring
to reconstruct the morphology of the initial form of
primates that was the basis for formation of the fami¬
ly of hominids.

The remains of higher primates resembling modern
anthropoids but differing from them at the same time
in many details of structure and forming extinct ge¬
nera (in the view of many palaeontologists and anthro¬
pologists even extinct families) have been discovered
in various places in Africa and Eurasia. They have
been described in detail, but unfortunately are
mostly represented by fragments of lower jaws
and teeth, i.e. the parts of the skeleton most often
preserved (as mentioned above). But the structural
features and size of the chewing apparatus make it
possible to judge the character of the predominant
food and are quite closely correlated with the general
size of the body and certain anatomical details of its
structure. Taken with comparative anatomy observa¬
tions of contemporary anthropoid apes, and of other
members of the order of primates, the single finds of
limb bones and other parts of the postcranial skeleton
of fossil primates can also be employed for recon¬
structions. On the whole they rest on rich comparative
anatomy and palaeontological material (Gregory,
Heilman, 1926, Remane, 1956, 1959; Krogh, 1959;
Simons, 1977; Chopra, 1978; Jolly [Ed.], 1978).

If the reader will look at the palm of his hand, he
will see a rich pattern of ridges and grooves, peculiar
tn their combination to each person, and at the same
time characteristic of all people on Earth, without
exception. All people have the same patterns, but
with a different outline, on the fingers and the sole of
the foot. Man apart, similar patterns are an integral
appurtenance of the foot and hand of arboreal-primates
and are justly considered decisive evidence of the
existence of an arboreal stage in the genesis of man,
t-e. of a period when his simian ancestors lived in trees,
fn some cases, evidence from comparative morphol-

71

ogy and palaeontology is cited of the absence of an
arboreal stage in the evolution of man (the most cir¬
cumstantial of these attempts is that of the Soviet
anthropologist and archaeologist Bonch-Osmolovsky).
The papillary patterns prevent any serious attitude to,
and acceptance of, such evidence. However, the skep-
sis toward the hypothesis of an arboreal stage con¬
tains a grain of truth after all; the overwhelming ma¬
jority of modern primates that live in trees are obvi¬
ous brachiators, i.e. forms that move by means of
brachiation (hanging and swinging from branches),
and flying from branch to branch through the inertia
obtained from swinging. That means of locomotion
involved the forming of several specialised attributes,
in particular the formation of a long flexible palm
with a reduced thumb and half-bent fingers. The
human hand, on the contrary, is distinguished by
strong development of the thumb. Could it have taken
shape from the hand of brachiating forms? Hardly. It
can therefore be thought that the initial form had I
locomotion (or a mode of movement) of a climbing 1
type, partly resembling that of gorillas when they 1
climb trees.

What follows from acceptance of locomotion of fl
climbing type as the main mode of progression of I
man’s initial ancestor? Brachiators not only have a
very distinctive structure of the hand but also no less
peculiar proportions of the body, viz., very long up¬
per limbs and a long body and relatively short lower
limbs. Proportions of that type are repeated in the
anthropoid apes that move by brachiation, namely |
the gibbon and chimpanzee, and the lower apes or I
brachiators; it is seemingly an expression of certain I
biomechanical laws of form that govern the wide oc- I
currence of such ratios of the length of body and I
limbs in the order of primates. But the initial form,*
not being a brachiator but a climbing primate, wasM
distinguished (it must be assumed) by shorter arms, a |
shorter torso, and longer legs. We have already spoken*
of upright posture of the body as a chief distinguish**
ing feature of all hominids. It could also have devel-1
oped to a degree even when climbing on branches, all

is witnessed by the locomotion of the gorilla, which
often stands on its hind limbs when moving on the
ground. In short, the initial form of hominids was to
some extent universal, dexterously climbing in the
trees but not forgetting about the ground and descend¬
ing from the trees, like gorillas, to gather food on
the ground and the lower parts of the forest. Such
an ecology and behaviour also seemingly limited the
size of the body; male specimens hardly weighed
more than 50 to 70 kilograms, and must have been
close in size to modern chimpanzees.

Giant forms are also found among apes, the goril¬
las being an example. A weight above 200 kilograms
and terrifying strength are frequent qualities among
males. Fortunately, in spite of fantastic stories about
them, gorillas are very peaceful creatures, feeding on
a vegetable diet and almost never coming into serious
conflicts with one another. But for all their peaceful
behaviour they have practically no enemies—preda¬
tors steer clear of attacking such strong animals. After
fragments of huge jaws and teeth of highly developed
primates, or the earliest hominids, were discovered
in China and on Java in the 40s (which were given the
name of Gigantopithecus and Meganthropus), it
became obvious that a tendency to gigantoidism
also accompanied the beginning of anthropogenesis.
The position of Gigantopithecus and Meganthropus in
the hominids system gave rise to many disputes;
subsequent discoveries in the Himalayan foothills in
Northern India made it possible to broaden the pre¬
sumed area of the habitat of Gigantopithecus in Asia;
like Meganthropus , this form was classed now among
highly developed extinct primates, now among early
men. The solution of these disputes, however, is sim¬
ple; the overwhelming majority of specialists at pres¬
ent, recognising the exceptional peculiarity of these
forms, do not see any convincing proof in their
morphology of their belonging to the family of homi-
mds and regard them as an extinct branch of anthro¬
poid apes. The early ideas about their colossal size
111 a Y seemingly be considered exaggerated; compara-
tlVe anatomy has indicated that evolutionary trends

73

to the formation of large jaws in various orders of
mammals are not necessarily accompanied with an
increase in body size. Growth of jaws and teeth are
local adaptations, as it were, caused by the impor¬
tance of their chewing function, in animals’ life,
so that the owners of such adaptations are often
called megamaxillary rather than gigantic forms. But
megamaxillariness, for all its usefulness, in certain
cases is evidence at the same time of extreme specialisa¬
tion and a certain evolutionary blind alley up which
an organism taking the road of this adaptation finds
itself. All megamaxillary or gigantic forms were
side branches of the human family tree, alongside the
initial form of hominids.

It is legitimate to pass from consideration of body
size, in connection with megamaxillariness, to a de¬
scription of the separate details of skull structure. De¬
termination of brain volume is particularly significant;
as I have already said, this is a most important attri¬
bute reflecting the position of mammals on the evolu¬
tionary ladder. Although the individual variations of
brain volume are very great, and a gorilla’s skull, for
example, has been described with a volume of 752
cubic centimetres, the great range of individual varia¬
tions is accompanied with a considerable group sta¬
bility, so that this attribute plays an essential taxo¬
nomic role. Considering the brain size of Australopi¬
thecus and Prezinjanthropus mentioned above, and
comparing it with the brain volume of the anthropoid
apes of today, it can be assumed that the initial form
of hominids had a brain volume of approximately
450 to 500 cubic centimetres. By analogy with all
known fossil finds and contemporary anthropoid
primates, there are sufficient grounds for taking
it that the brain case was characterised by an elongat¬
ed shape and a quite pronounced external relief
that did not attain the extremes in its development
typical, for example, of male gorillas with their huge
skull crests. The ratio of the brain and facial skeleton
roughly corresponds to what we observe in chimpan¬
zees, the closest of all anthropoids to man.

A form climbing in trees and sometimes descending

74

to the ground, tending to an upright posture of the
body and moving from time to time on its hind limbs,
with a brain volume of 450 to 500 cubic centimetres,
and dimensions very close to the chimpanzees, with¬
out extremely expressed specialisation, thus stands
at the source of anthropogenesis and forms the
starting point for the family of hominids. We know
roughly when the transition occurred from that form
to Australopithecus , viz., at the end of the Pliocene
or the very beginning of the Pleistocene, which yields
a dating in absolute figures of the fossil remains of
man’s precursors (in accordance with present possibil¬
ities) of roughly two million to three million years
(Bishop 8c Miller [Eds.], 1972; Findlater, 1978;
Walker, R. Leakey, 1978). But where did it take
place? Was it within the whole primaeval ecumene,
i.e. within, for practical purposes, the tropical areas
of the Old World, which has always been the main
area of distribution of primates, including anthro¬
poids? The human race most probably arose in the trop¬
ical zone, and possibly also in separate subtropical
areas adjoining it, as is evidenced both by the distri¬
bution of modern members of the primate order
and the ecology of the immediate precursors of man
reconstructed with some certainty. But the superior
morphology, behaviour, and use of tools of the early
hominids, compared with the primates that were
their beginning, hardly led to their complete isola¬
tion from their specific ecological niches in which
they arose and their spreading rapidly throughout the
whole tropical zone and part of the subtropics. It must
have been a slow gradual process. There are also no
grounds for assuming the origin of hominids in several
mutually adjoining centres; that idea takes us back
to the level of nineteenth-century science when the
hypothesis of polygenesis was first formulated,
t-e. the hypothesis of the origin of various groups
of fossil and modern men from different species of
apelike ancestors; it did not stand up to testing by
comparative anatomy and subsequently served as
the basis of racist views. We are consequently faced
with a need to select separate regions within the

tropical and subtropical zones that could be con¬
sidered as the areas where mankind took shape,
and as the primaeval homeland of humankind.

In deciding this matter of the primaeval home,
more than anywhere else, the fragmentariness of
the fossil finds and the yawning gaps in our very
modest knowledge of the geography of the fossil
forms are particularly felt. The homeland of human¬
kind is often put where the most finds are made.
The discovery and detailed investigation of remains
of Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus in Asia were
reflected in a hypothesis of an Asian home of man¬
kind (Larichev, 1969), which prevailed until recently.
The rich discoveries in human palaeontology made in
Africa over the past 20 years, have given this material
the main role (Larichev, 1980). But the Siwalik
Range in Northern India, known to palaeontologists
since the last century as the Eldorado of fossils,
continues to yield finds of forms close to hominids,
though not in the same quantity as in Africa. That
has given the Asian hypothesis new life, and new
supporters. I have expressed myself several times in
the literature in support of the hypothesis of an
African home of humankind, because of the excep¬
tional nature of the African finds, which illustrate all
the stages of human evolution, and the very great
similarity of man to precisely the African anthropoid
apes (an argument already put forward by Darwin for
an African homeland). But the final choice between
these hypotheses, and within Asia or Africa, between
separate regions, remains a matter of the future.

Division of the Hominid Family into
Subfamilies

The hominid triad, as has been established, is not
homogeneous chronologically, and the attribute
that took shape earliest is erect walking. That in
itself is enough to suggest theoretically that there
is an unevenness in the evolution of the various
organs not only in prehominids but also during the

76

evolution of the family itself. In addition, the data
on fossil hominids, at anthropologists’ disposal,
in spite of all their fragmentary character, make it
possible to trace this unevenness in the evolution of
the hand compared with that of the foot.

The structure of the hand of Australopithecus is
known from several bones of the carpus and meta¬
carpus, and also some phalanges of Paranthropus and
Plesanthropus. Their measurements allow us to say
that the hand of Australopithecus had great variabili¬
ty; the proportions of the separate bones of the
skeleton of the hand differed from modern ones, and
the proportions of the hand itself were also unique;
the metacarpus was relatively longer and the fingers
on the contrary relatively shorter than those of mod¬
ern man. The selliform shape of the joint of the first
metacarpal bone of Paranthropus is beyond doubt;
the ridge for attaching the muscles that moved the
thumb toward the palm was strongly developed;
and all this is evidence that the thumb moved in
opposition to the qther digits. The existence of
two sesamoid ossicles in the metacarpus at the same
time is considered a primitive attribute by Danilova
(1966). But Yakimov (1951) interpreted it, seemingly
with greater justification, as progressive, starting from
its absence in the hands of anthropomorphs. On
the whole the hand of Australopithecus, however,
had already attained quite a high level in progressive
development toward the formation of sapient fea¬
tures, but apparently still differed from the modern
hand in many attributes.

The hand bones of Prezinjanthropus preserved
allow of a more precise description (Napier, 1962).
The joint of the first metacarpal bone was also sel¬
liform, as in Paranthropus , and the thumb thus had
a marked capacity for opposition. But it was much
shorter than in modern man and Neanderthals or
Palaeoanthropus-, by that attribute Prezinjanthropus
occupied a position intermediate between modern
m en and anthropoids. The tips of the fingers were very
broad. Napier interpreted this as evidence of the capac-
hy of Prezinjanthropus’ hand to make a powerful

77

grasp. We thus find a peculiar ratio of primitive and
progressive traits in the hand of Prezinjanthropus ,
from which we can conclude that it, though already
fully bipedal, did not yet have a fully developed
hand, and consequently the preconditions for labour
were less developed in its morphological organisation
than in later hominids. In that respect it is classed
with Australopithecus.

When did a fully human hand, differing little or
not at all from the modem one take shape? The
extensive data assembled in Bonch-Osmolovsky’s
paper (1941) in connection with his study of the hand
of the Kiik-Koba (Crimea) man, indicate that thd
hand of Palaeoanthropus or Neanderthals was quite
human in general, though it differed from that of
modern man in its great breadth and massiveness;
that feature, however, was very probably associated
in general with the predominantly athletic habitus,
coarse built, and strongly developed musculature of
Neanderthal man. The shape of the proximal joint of
his first metacarpal bone was not yet stable, seeming¬
ly reflecting certain residual features of instability
of those elements of morphology that had been
intensively developed in the preceding stage. The dif¬
ficulty in opposing the thumb that could have arisen
with certain forms of this joint, however, were
compensated by strong development of the muscles
moving it. In all other respects the hand of Palaeoan¬
thropus did not differ from the modern one and so,
one must presume, was also adapted to delicate move¬
ments like the hand of modern man.

It is impossible, unfortunately, to draw such a
definite conclusion about the hand of archanthropes
or of members of the genus Pithecanthropus. No
hand bones of Javan specimens of Pithecanthropus
have been preserved, and one crescent-shaped wrist
bone of Sinanthropus has been found (Weidenreich,
1941). Where it differed somewhat from the same
bone of modern man was in its great width. The same
feature was thus discovered as in the hand of Nean¬
derthal man. But it would be more than risky (it
goes without saying) to assert that definitely from

78

one bone, so that our ideas of the structure of the
hand of archanthropes remain conjectural, of course.
The results of study of Lower Palaeolithic industry
provide certain possibilities for answering this question,
i.e. the discovery of the Pajitan culture on Java and
the great possibility of synchronising it with Pithe¬
canthropus, and stone inventory of location 15 with
remains of Sinanthropus in the Choukoutien Cave.
The development of the hand axe as a stable form of
Lower Palaeolithic tool links these finds chronolog¬
ically with the forming of archanthropes. The stabil¬
ity of tools’ forms and of their functional purpose
testifies not only to certain shifts in the conscious¬
ness of early man and enrichment of his technical
skills, but also indicates a perfecting of the motor
apparatus, further evolution of the hand, and perhaps
of the moulding of a truly human ratio between the
thumb and other fingers. That is the more probable
in that Lower Palaeolithic methods of working stone
were already distinguished by great complexity. The
suggestion that a nearly complete hand, close to the
modern type, was formed precisely at the stage of
the appearance of archanthropes seems fully conso¬
nant with the archaeological data and does not con¬
tradict the fossil anthropological material known to
us.

It needs to be noted that from that landmark, the
development of hand axes and the suggested forma¬
tion of a truly human hand also coincide with a
marked increase in the mass of the brain by 100 to 150
cubic centimetres. While the average size for Aus¬
tralopithecus and Prezinjanthropus ranged in practice
between 500 and 600 centimetres, the average size
for the Javan Pithecanthropes was approximately
900 centimetres, and it was even 100 to 150 cubic
centimetres bigger in Sinanthropus. A certain paral¬
lelism is observable between the transition to the
ne xt stage in the labour activity of early hominids
^d the perfecting of the morphology, in the first
Place, of those organs of the human body that con¬
tinued to evolve intensively, viz., the brain and the
hand. This parallelism eases our task of distinguishing

79

taxonomic groups within the hominid family.

It was noted above that comparative-anatomy
studies have indicated that the hand developed in
the direction of perfecting fine manipulations later
than upright walking perfected. There is direct and
very weighty evidence for that for both Australopi¬
thecus and Prezinjanthropus. On that basis one can
distinguish two subfamilies among the hominids—men
proper or the Homininae subfamily and the Australo-
pithecinae subfamily. When we remember that they
also differed in brain volume, and that there was a cer¬
ebral Rubicon between them in Keith’s sense, there
are additional grounds for the morphological op¬
posing of the two groups. Their chronological relation
is understandable; Australopithecus (to which Pre¬
zinjanthropus is related) preceded members of the
Homininae subfamily. The connection of each of
the subfamilies with the main stages in the develop¬
ment of material culture is also clear. The quite
amorphous stone industry of Prezinjanthropus must
obviously be treated as an expression of the biological
imperfection of its hand. That is even more justified
in relation to the primitive bone industry of Australo¬
pithecus.

Both subfamilies were systematised by the Ameri¬
can palaeontologists Gregory and Heilman (1939). j
But they were inclined to leave the subfamily
Australopithecinae without a definite place, without
deciding its position in advance. According to Simp¬
son’s widely accepted classification (1945) the sub¬
family of Australopithecinae should be included
the family of anthropomorphic apes. Other considera
tions, to some degree like those expressed here, wer
set out by Heberer (1956), which provided a basii
for uniting Australopithecus and the hominids
one family. But he introduced new names for th
subfamilies, departing from the priority rule by whic
the names first given to all taxonomic subdivision
should be retained; his names were based on one r
so Praehomininae (i.e. Australopithecus) and EuhA
mininae (i.e. hominids proper). This innovation wu
adopted by many systematisers and is often found 1

80

the literature. The nomenclature seems logical, but
it still cannot be adopted because of its breach of the
priority rule. It is therefore expedient to retain the
terminology of Gregory and Heilman. Robinson
(1961) and Koenigswald (1964) take a similar position.

To conclude this section I would dwell on the sug¬
gestion of distinguishing Prezinjanthropus as a special
genus Homo habilis, i.e. able or capable man (Leakey,
Tobias, Napier, 1964). It has been supported by
many specialists, became widely held, and had a sub¬
stantial influence on the answers to many problems
of the history of primitive society. In fact the appear¬
ance of a member of the genus Homo so early radical¬
ly reorganises our ideas of the sequence of human
evolution and forces us to look again at many aspects
of the process of anthropogenesis. But are there
morphological grounds for seeing an early member of
the genus Homo in this find? We pointed out above
that Prezinjanthropus did not exceed Australopi¬
thecus in brain volume; it also differed from later
hominids in the primitive features of the structure of
the hand. It is therefore hardly probable that even a
genus taxonomic rank should be maintained for it.
Its name is also unsatisfactory. Prezinjanthropus
should be classed on all the grounds mentioned
in the subfamily Australopithecinae, since its genus
cannot be Homo. At the same time the species name
habilis should seemingly be retained in accordance
with the same rule of priority, by which we had to
reject Heberer’s nomenclature. The most expedient
name would seemingly be Australopithecus or Paran-
thropus habilis.

Division of the Subfamily of Australopithecinae
into Genera and Its Place in Hominid History

i From consideration of the systematic position of
11 ezmjanthropus we can legitimately pass to the
s ystematics of Australopithecinae in general. This
Problem in itself is very complicated because of the
ragmentary character of the finds and their incom-
Ptete description, and because of the necessity of re-

S-294

81

lying only on bone fragments, as with the systemat-
ics of other fossil forms; in addition the problem is
still confused by an uncritical attitude to the material
and the common propensity among palaeontologists,
especially original discoverers, to raise the taxonomic
rank of finds. In accordance with the first works of
Dart and Broom on systematics and full description
of Australopithecinae (published at the end of the
40s and in the early 50s when the main finds had
been made), three genera were distinguished, viz.,
Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and Plesianthropus.
The grounds for this are not only the strictly morpho¬
logical criteria (certain morphological differences in
the structure of the skull and skeleton) but also their
occurrence in various locations. In 1961 yet another '
genus Chadanthropus was described. The genera are
not of the same type and unite several species accord¬
ing to existing ideas. Thus Raymond Dart (1948)
distinguished two species among the Australopithe¬
cinae, Australopithecus africanus and Australopithecus
prometheus. Two species were also distinguished in
the genus Paranthropus, viz., P. robustus and P. cras-
sidens (Broom 1938; Broom, Robinson, 1949). The
subfamily was thus characterised, seemingly, by con¬
siderable polymorphism, and great complexity of
systematic composition. That was subsequently
confirmed by later finds in Africa in the valley of the
Omo River, at Koobi Fora, and at Olduvai (Alexeev,
1978; R. Leakey, M. Leakey, Behrensmeyer, 1978;;
Walker, R. Leakey, 1978).

The grounds for that judgement are not, however,
wholly proved. The species Australopithecus africa¬
nus has been singled out from study of the facial part
of the skull and an endrocranium of a juvenile form
(yet it is known what significant age changes both the
brain and the skull undergo). The other species of
Australopithecus proper (A. prometheus) was distin¬
guished from fragments of the bones of an already
adult form. There is not the least guarantee that, ij
we had material at our disposal comparable in age,
we might not be able to group the two forms in one
species. A similar argument is justified as well for Pa-

ranthropus— both species were characterised from skull
bones and skeletons of adult specimens, but the dif¬
ferences established between them are not great and,
when we approach them on a zoological scale, do not
stand up to the demands made for the usual differ¬
ences between species. The species polymorphism of
the family thus seems exaggerated. To establish the
precise number of species in the subfamily Austra-
lopithecinae , especially since the latest finds (it is a
matter, of course, only of species within the limits
of existing finds), a special, critical inquiry is re¬
quired, based on an independent study of all the avail¬
able material, which no one has yet made.

The distinguishing of genera is also not without
subjectiveness. The genus Paranthropus was distin¬
guished from single finds that have even still been de¬
scribed only superficially. The distinctions between
members of the genera proper of Australopithecus
and Plesianthropus are not very marked. In practice,
if we allow for the scale of the differences between all
the forms of the subfajnily, only one point is obvious
and raises no doubt, viz., the sharp difference between
the two groups as regards size. The first group con¬
sists of comparatively gracile forms, represented
among both Australopithecus proper and Plesianth¬
ropus. They have besides relatively reduced jaws and
comparatively small teeth. The second group consists
of massive forms with very big jaws and very large
teeth. It was precisely these forms that Bunak (1959)
and Gremyatsky (1966) called megamaxillary or me-
gagnathic. They ar e Paranthropus. Within theAustralo-
pithecinae subfamily two genera can thus be distingui¬
shed, Australopithecus, proposed by Dart (1925) and
Paranthropus, suggested by Broom (1938). Robinson
(1954) took the same stand, pointing out certain addi¬
tional anatomical differences between the members
of these genera. The systematic position of Prezinjan-
thropus between these two genere (as noted above)
ls still quite unclear, but it must be noted, however,
that as regards size (i.e. according to the criterion on
which I have based the distinguishing of species
Within the subfamily) Prezinjanthropus is similar to

Australopithecus and differs quite markedly from
Paranthropus. The name Australopithecus habilis is
therefore preferable.

It follows from what we have said that the sub¬
family of Australopithecinae is the earliest stage in the
evolution of the family of hominids, the intermediate
link that unites man proper with the animal kingdom.
It has been possible up to the present to consider
their wide distribution over all Africa, or almost all,
proved. It is not ruled out that members of this
subfamily occurred on other continents as well,
although there is no direct evidence for it. At the
start of the Quaternary period, or even at the end
of the Tertiary, consequently, in conditions of a
hilly, semi-arid country in Africa separate populations
of anthropoid primates began to pass to walking
erect. The intensification of natural selection that
always accompanies turning points in the evolution of
the animal kingdom led to a quickening of this proc¬
ess, and to an intensification of evolutionary shifts
in morphology and behaviour. A decisive transition
was thus made toward consolidation and stabilisation
of upright walking. The liberation of the front
limbs created the prerequisites for constant use oi
objects as tools. An additional stimulus in that re
spect was the need for defence against numerous
carnivores in open localities. The first instruments
were not just tools but also means of defence and
attack. The touching up and working of natural
objects that arose as a result of their constant use
were the first rudiments of labour proper. It was
embodied in various forms—food-gathering, and the
hunting of small animals (sometimes quite big ones
like baboons). The tools had various forms and were
made from different materials—striking weapons
from the long limb bones of animals, from pebbles»
and possibly from wood.

The Subdivision of the Subfamily of Man Proper 1
into Genera

The third element of the hominid triad of most
significance for this subdivision, the brain, continued

84

to develop intensively during the transition from
archanthropes to palaeoanthropes and from the lat¬
ter to modem man, i.e. when the development of
upright gait had undoubtedly been completed and
(according to my suggestion, reinforced partly by
palaeoanthropology and partly by archaeology) a
hand had been formed close in its main features to
the modern one. The size and development of the
brain can be judged from endocrania, i.e. from the
traces of the inner cavities of the brain case, and al¬
though this judgment does not rest on study of the
brain itself, and many features of its structure, espe¬
cially of its internal structure, cannot be clarified, the
information obtained is adequate to reconstruct the
main stages of its evolution, since the change in brain
volume and macrostructure can be reconstructed
from it in sufficient detail.

Kochetkova (1966, 1978) and Tobias (1971) have
summarised all the data available on the volume of
the inner cavity of the skull of palaeoanthropes and
fossil neoanthropes. Brain volume grew intensively up
to the stage of palaeoanthropes, and increased in the
Middle and Upper Pleistocene by 350 to 500 cubic
centimetres. Several chronological and geographical
groups are distinguished among the palaeoanthropes
themselves, differing from one another in brain size,
but this difference is insignificant on the whole and
constitutes a trifling percentage compared with thesca-
le of the difference between archanthropes and palae¬
oanthropes. The fact that the difference between palae¬
oanthropes and neoanthropes is very small is interest¬
ing and extremely important; 26 male skulls of Nean¬
derthals have given an average brain volume of 1463,2
cubic centimetres, three females 1270,1 cubic cen¬
timetres; the corresponding averages for Upper
Palaeolithic men are 1581,1 (19 measurements) and
1476,6 cubic centimetres (11 measurements). One
gets an impression that palaeoanthropes as a whole
had already almost attained the inner volume of the
hrain case characteristic of modem man. The idea,
Ver y common in the literature, that Neanderthals’
brain volume was greater than modern man’s is not

85

confirmed by these figures. Separate groups resem¬
bling the late Neanderthals of Western Europe possi¬
bly even surpassed the modern average a little. The
reason for this evolutionary shift has been long dis¬
cussed, and has evoked many hypotheses whose au¬
thors have tried to explain it. All the hypotheses are
now of secondary importance, so there is no sense
in dwelling on them here, and my main conclu¬
sion is little altered by the existing disagreements;
palaeoanthropes were rather closer in brain volume to
modern man than to archanthropes.

The structure of the brain altered along with the
change in its volume. The macrostructure of the
endocrania of ancient and early men has been repeat¬
edly studied as more and more new finds have been
made, and studied along with investigation of the
morphological structure of the skeleton (almost all
full descriptions of fossil finds in fact contain chap¬
ters on the structure of the brain). The main point
brought out by all these investigations is the gradual
growth of the brain in height and an increase in the
relative size of the frontal lobes. In palaeoanthropes,
it is true, the lobes retain a primitive structure, and
have a flat ‘beak-like’ shape; that fact, like the gener¬
ally quite primitive relation of the various parts of
the brain, and the growth of the parietal and occipital
segments, has provided grounds for drawing a sharp
line between the brain structure of palaeoanthropes
and modern man. The overwhelming majority of spe¬
cialists share that view, which is a reflection of the
general appreciation of the scale of the differences
between palaeontropes and modem man. From the
evolutionary standpoint this scale was interpreted as
an index of the various effects of natural selection,!
i.e. the reconstruction of the morphology of pa¬
laeoanthropes under the influence of selective factors
and the considerable weakening of them in modern
man (Kremyansky, 1941; Davidenkov, 1947;Rogins*
ky, 1947, 1951).

Even while sharing that view on the whole, one
must bring in the recently obtained facts on the evoj
lutionary restructuring of the brain macrostructuri!

86

already in neoanthropes, i.e. the finds Cro-Magnon III
and Pavlov, which belong to the earliest time of the
Upper Palaeolithic. Foci of growth in the lower
frontal convolution are more strongly expressed on
endocranium of Cro-Magnon III and less so on the
endocranium from the Pavlov site, and a quite primi¬
tive relation is preserved in regard to the big occipital
lobes and the comparatively small cerebellum (Koche¬
tkova, 1964, 1966). This structure of endocrania of
early forms of Late Palaeolithic men testifies in part
to a continuing evolutionary restructuring and means
that the effect of selection was still quite strong. It
can seemingly be said from this that the demarcation
line between palaeoanthropes and modern man had
not completely disappeared and continued to exist in
quite well-defined form, though its outlines were to
some extent becoming blurred. That conclusion is
important, in turn, for establishing an essentially
correct and most reasonable grouping of the fossil
forms of man within the subfamily Homininae.

When such a grouping is based on the foregoing
exposition, it should, in the first place, reflect vari¬
ants of the structure of the most important and change¬
able structure in this subfamily, i.e. the brain. We
must apparently include the later forms, which had
attained or nearly attained the modern level of brain
volume, in one group; and must oppose the group of
early hominids with a small brain volume to it. The
generic rank of the two raises no doubts and corre¬
sponds, moreover, to the established systematic tra¬
dition. The rule of priority limits the possibilities in
choice of names of genera: the chronologically ear¬
liest genus must seemingly be called Pithecanthropus,
from the name of the famous find made by Dubois
(1894), and the chronologically later genus called
Homo, which was proposed of course by Linnaeus
in the tenth edition of Systema naturae in 1758.
The members of the first group are archanthropes, of
the second palaeoanthropes and modem man.

In our proposed subdivision of the subfamily of
Homininae we follow Woo Ju-kang (1964) and Gre-
m yatsky (1950, 1962, 1964). Sometimes, as for

87

example in Nesturkh’s classification (1941, 1960),
instead of two taxonomically equivalent generic
groups three are distinguished (palaeoanthropes are
distinguished separately) in the rank of subgenera,
united in one genus corresponding taxonomically to
the level of the subfamily in our classification. Consid¬
erations have already been adduced above, in accord¬
ance with which it is reasonable to lump the palaeo¬
anthropes together with modern man, and not to
oppose them to archanthropes and neoanthropes as

an independent group. But another principle of group¬
ing, differing from mine, has been put forward and
argued in the literature, by which palaeoanthropes are
classed together with archanthropes and opposed to
modern man (Debets, 1948). It reflects the already
mentioned propensity to see developing forms in the
first, and relatively stable morphological types in the
second, little affected by the operation of selection.
Some new data come into contradiction with this
trend, as mentioned above.

To sum up this section, the biggest structural changes
within the hominids proper, i.e. members of the
subfamily Homininae, have taken place in the brain
and, of course, the many features of skull structure
correlated with them. The modern level of the mass
of the brain, or one close to it, had already been
reached at the stage of palaeoanthropes. The restruc¬
turing continuing then, and its completion in modern
man, are usually regarded as evidence of intensive
evolution before the appearance of Homo sapiens and
its cessation in Upper Palaeolithic times. The opposite
point of view has been repeatedly criticised, but
the inquiries of recent years have revealed foci of
intensive growth on the endocrania of certain Upper
Palaeolithic men that testify to continuing evolution¬
ary transformations. On the other hand, the very
growth of the brain’s mass creates favourable prereq¬
uisites for and possibilities of a reorganisation of
structure. One can therefore distinguish two genera,
orienting oneself on brain volume, in the subfamily
Homininae, viz.. Pithecanthropus and Homo. The
first includes all archanthropes, and the second
palaeoanthropes and modern man.

Subdivision of the Genus of Archanthropes
into Species and Its Place in Hominid
History

There is a very marked propensity in the systemat-
ics of the genus of archanthropes to exaggerate the
taxonomic rank of the separate finds, as in the syste-
matics of Australopithecinae . The worker singles out
his find, as a rule, no matter how fragmentary it is,
as a separate genus, This tendency began with Dubois
who proposed the generic title which (as I have already
said) is still retained by right of priority for the
whole genus. Then the genus name Sinanthropus was
proposed for Sinanthropes. Finally, generic rank was
also given to Arambourg’s finds in North Africa in
1954-55, and a corresponding name Atlanthropus.
Thus, within this systematic unit, which I have
taken as a genus, three genera are usually distingu¬
ished. And when we remember that the find at
Mauer, near Heidelberg, in 1907, is also often given a
generic status, the total number of 4 species within
the genus of archanthropes, as we see it, is increased
to four.

What are the ways for understanding the true
differentiation of the genus and its subdivision into
species? At first glance it would seem most reasonable
to follow the line of reducing the taxonomic rank
of the separate fossil forms and bringing all the enu¬
merated genera to the level of species. That way there
would be four species within the genus, as I have
just remarked. There are all the morphological grounds
for that: the volume and structure of the brain and
the structure of the skulls of Pithecanthropus and
Sinanthropus have a significant similarity, though
they differ in details. Similarly the structure of the
teeth and jaws of Heidelberg man and the Atlan-
thrope are similar in spite of certain peculiar features.
The geographical criterion also seems to testify in
favour of the species independence of all four forms,
^• Heidelberg man (Europe), Atlanthropus (North
Africa), Sinanthropus (Eastern Asia), and Pithecan-
nropus (Southeast Asia). But a closer examination of

89

their morphology forces us to introduce certain cor¬
rections to this idea.

First of all, a minimum of two of the listed types
of fossil man are two successive rungs on the evolu¬
tionary ladder, viz., the Pithecanthropes and the
Sinanthropes. The remarkable and widely known
inquiries of Franz Weidenreich, published in 1936-45,
indicate with complete certainty that Sinanthropus
was at a higher level of evolutionary development
than Pithecanthropus. That is indicated both by the
greater volume of its brain and the higher vault of the
skull, and a certain attenuation of the superciliary
relief, and other less essential features of its morphol¬
ogy. The discovery of new remains of Pithecan¬
thropes in recent decades fully supports the reality of
these differences. That all the more strikingly contrasts
Sinanthropes to Pithecanthropes since among the
finds made in the 30s, Pithecanthropus IV (represent¬
ed, it is true, only by small fragments of the skull) is
distinguished by extreme coarseness and primitiveness
of structure. Some workers even suggested singling
Pithecanthropus IV out as a separate species (for
which there is apparently no basis), but the find
quite graphically and eloquently supports the pos¬
sibility of an evolutionary contrasting of Pithecan¬
thropes and Sinanthropes and their sequence on the
evolutionary ladder. There is absolutely no doubt
of the need to single out these two species within the
genus Pithecanthropus from the evolutionary, mor¬
phological standpoint. In accordance with the priority
rule they should correspondingly be called Pithecan¬
thropus erectus (Dubois, 1894), i.e. upright walking
Pithecanthrope, and Pithecanthropus pekinensiS
(Black, 1927), i.e. the Chinese Pithecanthrope.

As for the other two forms—Heidelberg man an<
Atlanthropes—many workers have repeatedly pointe<
out their more progressive character compared witl
Pithecanthropes and, on the contrary a certain similar
ity in that respect with Sinanthropes. The same cal
also be said about the more recent finds of humaaj
remains of this stage of the evolution of hominids^
i.e. those from Vertesszollos in Hungary and BilzingS'l

leben in the German Democratic Republic. It is
difficult to speak quite definitely of a similarity
between them, since all four finds represent va¬
rious fragments of skulls and lower jaws. The geo¬
graphical criterion is seemingly the main one in this
case; one can therefore unite the populations of all
four forms in one species inhabiting Europe and
North America, designating it again in accordance
with the priority rule Pithecanthropus heidelbergensis
(Schoetensack, 1908).

The classification of the genus Pithecanthropus
(now that it has been distinguished, I can use this
name for all early hominids equally with the term
‘archanthropes’) cannot, however, be considered
final, until we consider the place in the system of the
so-called Javan Neanderthals, whose skulls were
found at Ngandong in the valley of the River Solo
in Java in 1931, and the new finds of the last two de¬
cades in Africa. In the overwhelming majority of both
special studies and general works the Javan forms from
the solo River are put into the group of palaeoanthro-
pes. But the author of the detailed morphological des¬
cription of these forms, Franz Weidenreich (1951)
convincingly showed that they were much cjoser in
brain and skull structure to the Pithecanthropes and
Sinanthropes than to palaeoanthropes. In brain vol¬
ume they were close to Sinanthropes;many extremely
primitive features were discovered in their skull
structure (a very developed sagittal torus, and an
unusual growth of the relief of the skull). Weiden¬
reich’s point of view was shared by Bunak (1959).
Certain statistical comparisons also support it (Ale¬
xeev, 1978). But the position of these finds in the
classification system is not decided merely by their
similarity with members of the genus Pithecanthro¬
pus, noted above. Their chronological dating is very
kte, and they are possibly synchronous with palaeoan¬
thropes, but might even be the earliest representatives
°f modern man (Oakley, 1964; Ivanova, 1965). A
similarity with palaeoanthropes has been discovered
ln individual morphological features. The peculiar
Morphology of these finds, in which very primitive

91

attributes of the genus Pithecanthropus are combined
with certain progressive features characteristic of
palaeoanthropes, and also their late chronological age
make it possible to distinguish a fourth species in
the genus Pithecanthropus and call it, employing the
priority of the name, Pithecanthropus soloensis
(Oppenoorth, 1932).

In strata at Olduvai, dated absolutely as roughly
300 000 y.a., a skull was found (designated in the
literature as Olduvai II) that very much resembled
that of Javan Pithecanthropus in the ratio of its
dimensions, i.e. a very low height and great length
of the brain case, a brain volume of approximately
1000 cubic centimetres, and development of skull
relief, especially of the frontal relief. The total geo-
graphical range of this form in the broad sense remains
unknown, but it is clear that its typical features are
repeated in the early population of Koobi Fora. This
concerns two skulls whose chronological age is ap¬
parently more than 1 500 000 years (Walker, R. Lea¬
key, 1978). One of these, designated KNM-ER
3733, had a brain volume of 850 cubic centimetres;
the other, designated KNM-ER 3883, had a brain
volume greater than the first, in this case around
1000 cubic centimetres. Heberer (1963), relying on
the structural features of the Olduvai II skull, and al¬
lowing for its similarity to Javan Pithecanthropus and
the African geographical range, distinguished a new
species of Pithecanthropus, naming it P. leakeyi in
honour of Louis Leakey. This is a fifth species of
Pithecanthropus, in which the forms mentioned from
Koobi Fora should be included, despite the fact that
there is a chronological gap of more than a million
years between them.

The finding of a skull, at Koobi Fora in 1972,
designated KNM-ER 1470, attracted great attention.
It was originally dated at 2 700 000 to 3 000 000
y.a. (Day, Leakey, Walker, Wood, 1975), but now the
dating has been changed to not less than 1 600 000
y.a., but may be more than 2 500 000 years old
(Walker, Leakey, 1978; M. Leakey, R. Leakey, Behrens-
meyer, 1978). The brain volume was determined al

92

first at around 800 to 820 cubic centimetres, but
later, after a second, more accurate measurement,
at 700 to 775 cubic centimetres. The skull is much
more gracile than those of Pithecanthropus soloensis
and P. leakeyi, which is expressed in both the thick¬
ness of the bones and the slight development of fron¬
tal relief. It could be thought, from that, that it is
the skull of a female specimen, but the exceptional
length of the face, close to the maximum for ancient
and early men, forces one to think it a male skull.
In that case its differences from the skulls of other
Pithecanthropes are obvious. It has therefore been
suggested to include a sixth species in the genus,
called Pithecanthropus rudolfensis, from the old
name of Lake Turkana. The skull KNM-ER 1813,
discovered at Koobi Fora in 1973 should also appar¬
ently be included in this species; it occurred in geolog¬
ically later strata dated not later than 1 200 000 y.a.,
but possibly belonging to an earlier time of 1 600 000
y.a. (Walker, Leakey, 1978; M. Leakey, R. Leakey,
Behrensmayer, 1978). This time we are dealing with
an indisputably female individual, with a skull of
very small dimensions and a brain volume of not
more than 500 cubic centimetres. In its structural
features, however, it is similar to KNM-ER 1470.
Such dimensions resemble Central African pigmies;
perhaps there was a tendency to dwarfishness in Afri¬
ca from the earliest stages of the history of the
hominid family, which stems from many causes
(environmental influences, shifts in growth processes,
appropriate selection). We await further discoveries.

The place of Pithecanthropus in the history of ho-
minids is determined by the chronological range of
the finds. For the Javan Pithecanthropus we have a
date of 1 000 000 to 1 500 000 y.a.; the African
Pithecanthropes may even be older. The Solo homi-
n *ds, as already indicated, are most probably very
late. Pithecanthropus thus represents, on the whole,
the first group of men proper, which existed for a
Ver Y long time; arising from Australopithecus, it was
an intermediate link between the subfamily of Aus-
tr alopithecinae and the genus Homo. Some forms of

93

■

Pithecanthropus continued to exist, obviously, simul¬
taneously with Homo.

Subdivision of the Genus Homo into
Species

Two of the three main attributes in the hominid
triad, vez., upright walking and free upper limbs
capable of performing very fine manual operations,
had wholly, or almost wholly taken shape (as I have
already said) at the time of the appearance of the genus
Homo. But the third attribute, the brain, continued
to develop intensively during the history of the genus
Homo, as comparative study of the endocrania of pa-
laeoanthropes and the features of the brain of modem
man testifies (Holloway, 1974). This development
was not displayed in a change in the dimensions of
the brain itself (they had already, as we recall, at¬
tained their maximum), but in changes in the size of its
separate component areas, and in changes in their
ratios, i.e. in a reorganisation of its structure. There¬
fore, in consistently following the same principle of
distinguishing the most intensively developing struc¬
ture in the hominid triad at a certain stage of evolu¬
tion, and distinguishing taxonomic categories by the
variants of this structure, we must differentiate species
within Homo, evidently according to the structure of
the brain.

The brain of palaeoanthropes differed from that of
modern man (as I have already said) in a more primi¬
tive structure, expressed in its underdevelopment in
height, simplified shape of the frontal lobes, growth
of the occipital region, and a small cerebellum (Bu¬
nak, 1951; Kochetkova, 1966, 1973). The differentia¬
tion by those morphological signs coincides with the
chronological differences; the more ancient forms
differ in the primitive features of brain structure,
while the later ones are closer to modern man. A
coincidence of brain structure is also observed with
the stages of development of the material culture
(bone remains of primitive forms are discovered in

94

Moustcrian sites, while progressive forms are found in
Upper Palaeolithic burials). The sole exceptions to
that rule, like the find of a child’s skull of a clear¬
ly modern type at Staroselye (in the Crimea) in
a Mousterian horizon, are rare and cannot break the
general pattern. Full development of those elements
of human culture that arose in Mousterian times is
thus really connected with full development of the
morphological structure of fossil man to the level of
modern man, and to some extent is seemingly due to
realisation of its inherent potentialities. And that, of
course, applies primarily to the evolution of the brain.

A division into palaeoanthropes and neoanthropes
is consequently justified from various angles, which
explains the complete predominance of that view on
the group differences in late fossil hominids. The
species name of Homo sapiens was proposed for mod¬
ern man in the tenth edition of Linnaeus’ Systema
naturae. Two species names were proposed for palaeo¬
anthropes by King (1861) and Wilser (1897), viz.,
Homo neanderthalensis and Homo primigenius. Both
were equally successful in general; the former was
based on the geographical place name of one of the
first, most famous finds, while the latter stressed the
primitive features of palaeoanthropes’ morphology.
Following the priority rule, however, preference
should be given to the first name.

For a diagnosis of the two species, the palaeoan¬
thropes and modern man, much attention has always
been paid, and still is, to the numerous differences
between them in the structure of the skeleton and in
particular the cranial morphology. Anthropologists
have shown great patience and ingenuity in the quest
for additional signs differentiating the two forms,
striving for an ever fuller and more detailed morpho¬
logical description of the differences between them.
Such quests have a practical significance as well as
great theoretical importance; the bulk of the fossil
finds of palaeoanthropes, as we already know, is frag¬
mentary, and most of them are generally individual
bones of the skeleton or skull, so that the better the
morphology of the palaeoanthrope skeleton is studied

i

95

in comparison with modern man the greater are the
possibilities for diagnosing the separate finds.

All or almost all of these differences in skeletal
structure have no absolute significance and also are
of a complex character; more often than not the diag¬
nosis must be made according to the fullest possible
combination of attributes. The most important of
them is the structure of the skull and, moreover, not
the facial part but the brain case; the height of the
cranial vault, the development of brow ridges, the
slant of the frontal bones, the shape of the occipit,
and the development of the muscle relief on it. The
morphology of the lower jaw is also very important,
in particular the protuberance at the front of the chin
(mental protuberance), and also the structure of the
teeth. Some of these attributes are associated with
the size and shape of the brain, some play an indepen¬
dent role in the anatomical diagnosis, but on the whole
they are of auxiliary significance. Proceeding from
everything said above, palaeoanthropes should be sepa¬
rated from modern man, when possible, with reliance
on brain structure, and only in the absence of infor¬
mation on the endocranium, and the impossibility of
getting it, should other attributes be taken into consid¬
eration, in the first place, of course, the features of
the brain case morphologically correlated with the
structure of the brain. From that angle individual cases
of the development of Neanderthal attributes on
the skulls of modern man, noted many times in the
literature, have no taxonomic significance; in no case
can they be employed as evidence of the closeness of
any modem racial type to the palaeoanthrope type.

So two groups are contrasted within the genus
Homo according to the structure of the brain and
the ratio of its parts. The first is distinguished by the
preservation of many primitive traits and includes the
palaeoanthropes. The second, characterised by full
development of the brain to the modern level, is the
group of neoanthropes. On that basis the genus Homo
is divided into two species: Homo neanderthalensis
and Homo sapiens. The forming of the modern struc¬
ture coincides with the development of the latter

96

species in almost all other traits. The general systemat¬
ic of the family of Hominidae and the genus Homo
are thus as follows:

Family: Hominidae (Gray, 1985)

1st Subfamily: Australopithecinae (Gregory and
Heilman, 1939)

1. Genus Australopithecus (Dart, 1925)

2. Genus Paranthropus (Broom, 1938)

2nd Subfamily: Homininae (Gregory and Heil¬
man, 1939)

1. Genus Pithecanthropus (Dubois, 1894)

(1) Species Pithecanthropus erectus (Dubois,
1894)

(2) species Pithecanthropus pekinensis (Black,
1929)

(3) species Pithecanthropus soloensis (Op-
penoorth, 1932)

2. Genus Homo (Linnaeus, 1758)

(1) species Homo neanderthalensis (King,
1861)

(2) species Homo sapiens (Linnaeus, 1758)

The Place of Palaeoanthropes in Hominid
History

For the sake of fullness I must say a few words
about the genetic relations of the species in the ge¬
nus Homo and their correlation with the species of
the preceding genus, since this problem has always
had a major place in the literature on anthropology,
and still does. Practically speaking it is a matter of
the place of palaeoanthropes in regard to archanthropes
and modern man. In the last century and first two
decades of ours it was generally accepted that the pa¬
laeoanthropes were a side shoot in the history of the
hominid family, with no relation to the forming of
nian of the modern type; the factual basis for that
view lay in the peculiar morphology of palaeoan¬
thropes and an overestimate of the scale of their morp¬
hological differences from modern man. But in 1927

Ales Hrdlicka convincingly demonstrated a Neander¬
thal stage in the evolution of the modern type of man
(Hrdlicka, 1927). To prove it he cited morphological
considerations (the intermediate character of palaeo-
anthropes’ morphology between archanthropes and
modern men, and the existence of Neanderthal
traits in the skulls of modern man), pointed out geo¬
graphical criteria (the occurrence of palaeoanthropes
over all the continents of the Old World, except
Australia, which was settled later), and drew atten¬
tion to the relative chronology of Neanderthal
finds and the oldest finds of skeletons of modern man
(the former being older), and employed archaeologi¬
cal data (the Upper Palaeolithic industry is linked with
the Mousterian by an unbroken continuity). Subse¬
quent finds have confirmed the justice of his view of
the existence of a Neanderthal phase in the history of
the hominid family, demonstrating that palaeoan¬
thropes were distributed more broadly than supposed;
a particularly clear example was Academician Okladni¬
kov’s discovery in 1938 of the skeleton of a palaeoan-
thrope in the Teshik-Tash cave in Central Asia (Uzbe¬
kistan).

The hypothesis of presapience, vigorously devel¬
oped by Heberer, Vallois, and many other eminent
West European anthropologists, is a certain modifica¬
tion of former views of palaeoanthropes as a side
branch of hominid evolution. According to it men
differing little in their morphology from modern man
existed simultaneously with palaeoanthropes, or
perhaps even a little earlier. The factual basis for this
hypothesis is the finds at Swanscombe (England) and
Fouteshevade (France). But one cannot rely on them
with certainty because of their fragmentary character.
Rogensky (1947, 1951), who has done much to over¬
throw this hypothesis, showed that the Swanscombe
skull is closer, in many of the traits accessible to study,
to the skulls of palaeoanthropes than to modem
ones. Trinkaus (1973) did the same in regard to the
skull from Fouteshevade. The skulls from the Omt
Valley (Ethiopia) are also not indicative, though it
was initially written that they belonged to a modern

98

type and were of great antiquity. That raised doubts;
morphologically these skulls like the preceding ones,
are far from indisputably sapient. The factual basis of
the hypothesis is therefore very shaky; in addition it
does not explain what is the origin of those ancient
sapient forms, from which it deduces the origin of
modern man. All that forces us to be very critical in
regard to it. As for local varieties within the palaeo-
anthropes themselves, and their genetic relation to
modern man, it is more reasonable to treat the whole
range of these matters in connection with the
origin of man of the modern type.

The chronological history of palaeoanthropes
fits into a broad time scale of roughly 35 000 to
150 000 years. It is quite evident that their physical
traits must have undergone a considerable evolution
over such a long time; the detailed outlines of that
evolution, however, are still not quite clear. It is
still unclear, too, what species of archanthropes was
the basis for the Neanderthal type. But there is no
doubt, as is clear from the foregoing, that the Nean¬
derthal type underlay the origin of Homo sapiens.
And that is what determines its place in the history of
the hominid family.

Integration of the Categories of the
Classification System

My treatment of the classification system of homi-
nids in the preceding pages is based on the results
both of my own special work and of investigations of
fossil finds described in many monographs published
ln various countries. The references to studies that
share my exposition or similar views indicate that the
Position I hold on this classification is not an isolated
one and rests on principles shared by many and quite
deeply developed. I stress this specially because,
alongside the tendency to employ a detailed classifi¬
cation of all forms relating to hominids in anthropol-
°8 1 cal science research, there is also an opposite
re nd to consolidate and integrate the whole mass

7 '

99

of systematic categories and to distribute all fossil
forms of man’s ancient ancestors among a very small
number of species and genera. I mentioned above that
the palaeontologist who makes a find usually wants
to raise it to as high a systematic rank as possible,
from that aspect this propensity to consolidation
must be regarded as a progressive phenomenon in sys-
tematics in general and in the classification system of
fossil men in particular. But with consistent following
of any, even effective, approach there is a great dan¬
ger of schematicism in the conclusions, and loss of
the dialectical richness of reality. In my specific case,
one can say in advance that, with immoderate consol- ]
idation of the number of categories in the classifica- i
tion system, there will be a wiping out of the mor¬
phological differences between the separate forms, and I
the whole process of anthropogenesis will be given a
depressing monotony, the more so that these mor-j
phological differences reflect areal diversity of genetic!
relations between the local groups of ancient homi-fl
nids.

The striving to broaden the limits of the classifica-1
tion categories in anthropogenesis, and as a conse-EI
quence, to reduce their total number, began with
Mayr’s paper (1951) read to a special symposium!
devoted to extending the front of genetic studies j
in anthropology and in general to the introduction of
the methods and postulates of modern genetics inta
theoretical anthropology. Mayr, one of the outstand¬
ing theorists of modem evolutionary biology, spoke
from the standpoint of his discipline, and in manyJ
cases quite justifiably criticised anthropologists for
the unwarranted generic designation of fossil forms
that we have met in the preceding exposition. Mayi’s
own speciality was ornithology, in which he was a
leading expert. Why did an ornithologist and evolu¬
tionist speak about the interpretation of problems of
anthropogenesis, putting forward an original concep- I
tion of some of them and defending it at an interna- j
tional forum? Before answering, I must look at tb«
system of ideas he proposed. In opposition to th £
view of the palaeontologists he criticised, who naD

rowed the limits of classification categories, relying
on data of evolutionary biology and palaeontology,
and comparing modern species and genera with fossil
ones, he defended a hypothesis of lumping all fossil
ancestors of man (including Australopithecus) togeth¬
er in one genus Homo with three species— Homo
transvaalensis, Homo erectus, and Homo sapiens. The
first species embraced all Australopithecines, the sec¬
ond all archanthropes, and the third palaeoanthropes
and modern man. In the English literature two terms
have become common of late that have been taken up
in other languages; uniting systematisers are called
‘lumpers’ and dividers ‘splitters’. Mayr’s proposal, it will
be readily understood, was an extreme expression of
the lumpers’ point of view on anthropogenesis.

Lumperism is very common in palaeontology of
late, representing a legitimate reaction to the preced¬
ing splitterism. The reaction, which corresponds to
the spirit of the times, naturally proved very strong in
anthropogenesis, and Mayr’s proposal found full, or
partially full support among specialists working direct¬
ly on palaeoanthropological materials, and especially
those who are trying to create a more or less integral
picture of the chronological development of ancient
hominids. It is interesting to note that one of the first
who accepted lumping all known hominids together
in one genus was the same J. T. Robinson (1961),
whose subdivision of Australopithecines into two
genera— Australopithecus and Paranthropus— still
retains its whole value (as I have tried to show above).
He himself, defending the propensity to lump togeth¬
er archanthropes and later hominids, held to his
former view as regards Australopithecines. So far
many works have been published since then with
v anous taxonomic evaluations of Australopithecines,
but continuing the same trend of lumping later homi-
mds together (see, for example, Wolpoff, 1980). This
trend has become particularly common in English-
speaking countries, while the opposite splitting trend
fetains its significance and continues to be developed
Z 1 German-language countries (see, for example,
* e ustel, 1983).

101

It will readily be understood from the earlier sec¬
tions of this chapter that I am critical of lumperism
in anthropogenesis, however progressive it seems at
first glance, and whatever the objective reasons in
palaeontology that gave rise to it, and whatever the
arbitrariness in the invention of ever newer categories
it would suppress. But the main point is what argu¬
ments can be advanced in favour of this critical at¬
titude and what is the fundamental weakness of lum¬
perism in anthropogenesis. Two arguments, it seems
to me, are basic in this respect. Some advocates of
it imply that there were no genetic barriers between
the local groups of ancient hominids, while others sta¬
te clearly that members of these groups could freely
interbreed just as members of close species some¬
times do in nature. If we make an absolute of the
criteria of cross-breeding, all ancient hominids in
fact belong to one species and their epispecific dif¬
ferentiation is hardly probable. But (1) this phenom¬
enon, interbreeding of members of close species, is
a rare exception and not the rule in nature, and (2)
the hypothesis of the absence of genetic barriers in
the early stages of hominid evolution contradicts all
the study of these barriers in modern society by gene¬
ticists and anthropologists. Their role, and especially
that of geographical barriers, is immense even now;
how much stronger it must have been at the dawn of
human history. The effect of genetic barriers was
heightened by a low density of population. So one can¬
not speak of free interbreeding among ancient homi¬
nids (even if there had been the biological precondi¬
tions for it, it could not have been realised in prac¬
tice), and consequently the premisses for seeing them
as members of one species disappear. The argument
nevertheless has a circumstantial character, but it is
supported by direct observations of the scale of the
differences between the separate groups of ancient
hominids as regards the skull (Kharitonov, 1973) and
skeleton (Kharitonov, 1974) compared with mam¬
mals. This scale corresponds more to generic and epi-
generic differences than to specific and epispecific
ones. The direct argument, consequently tells against

102

lumperism and in favour of the itemisation of homi-
nid classification I have adopted.

It would seem logical, after what has been said, to
pass to a review of the factors in the formation and
dynamic of man’s ancestors, the driving forces that
governed the process of anthropogenesis and caused
progressive morphological changes during the transi¬
tion from ape to man and during the evolution of
hominids. It is my deep conviction, however, that all
the biological patterns of these processes operated
through special channels created by labour; my sur¬
vey of the factors of anthropogenesis will therefore
be dealt with in the next chapter on the labour activ¬
ity of ancient and early men.

3

THE ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF TOOL

USE

The beginning and structure of tool use

A clear understanding of what constitutes tool use is
absolutely necessary in order to draw a precise line
between what we call animal behaviour and the ag¬
gregate of the actions that are designated as labour
operations and the social behaviour of modern man’s
immediate precursors. I have not put ‘of early homi-
nids’ in the title of this chapter because it is my pro
found conviction that only hominids performed tool
activity, that it is expedient, purposive, fruitful work,
and that all efforts to attribute tool use to animals are
in fact unconvincing and theoretically unsound; the
separate cases of the use of objects as tools or weap¬
ons by higher animals are not tool use, just as bea¬
vers’ building of dams and lodges, or ants’ or termites’
building of hills, or birds’ making of nests is not tool
use. In the pages that follow tool use will be re¬
garded from that angle.

Here I must mention the hypothesis of prehuman,
animal, instinctive, or reflex labour put forward in
its fullest form and widely employed in the Soviet
literature by workers so dissimilar in their views on
the early stages of sociogenesis as B. F. PorshneV
(1955) and Y. I. Semenov (1962). The former did
much to demonstrate, not the absence of a palpa¬
ble boundary between animals and early man, but
their complete identity, and to prove the develop¬
ment of the human essence only from man of the;
modern type Homo sapiens, and put ingenious
arguments for the biologisation of the early stages of
human evolution up to the verdict of the scientific

104

public. Semenov did no less to give the early stage of
anthropogenesis a concrete social content and to trace
in detail the rise of many social links within the
unit groups of ancient and early hominids. The atti¬
tude of each of these men to instinctive or reflex
prehuman labour was different, and they treated it
differently, but what was important for them was
that which brought them together, viz., a belief in the
real existence of the phenomenon of animal labour it¬
self, and an attempt to demonstrate it. Porshnev and
his supporters supposed that Neanderthal man or the
palaeoanthrope was an animal; they therefore
brought the history of animal labour, labour in an in¬
stinctive form, up to the appearance of man of the
modern type, seeing no difference in that respect
between the activity of bees and of Neanderthals, but
on the contrary confidently postulating the absence
of such a difference. Semenov, like many others,
revolted against such conclusions; for him the de¬
marcation line between animals and man cut Pith¬
ecanthropus and Sinanthropus , i.e. archanthropes,
off from the animal world and transferred reflex la¬
bour to the stage before them. The approach to the
problem, however, was not altered in principle by
that; it was all a matter of the same boundary be¬
tween real, truly human labour, and prehuman, ani¬
mal labour; the disagreement was only about where
to draw the chronological boundary.

What is the theoretical meaning of the hypothesis
of instinctive labour? And what is its place in under¬
standing the evolutionary dynamic of the human
race? Unfortunately, with today’s overproduction of
information, and the brevity of the description of the
results of scientific work, researchers very seldom lift
f^e curtain on the psychological motives guiding
them in their choice of line of inquiry or hypothesis.
I think the main thing in the case interesting me lies
ln a purposeful quest for intermediate forms between
the lowest forms of animals’ life activity and the high¬
est forms of man’s, i.e. in the end to substantiate,
nowever unconsciously or barely consciously, an evo-

lut;

ronary approach to study of the dynamics of a

105

sphere of behaviour as was the case a hundred years
ago in morphology. Modern biology has rejected a
straightforward, evolutionary approach in morpholo¬
gy, it is still less theoretically acceptable, in the study
of behaviour (a phenomenon incomparably more
complicated than morphology because of the immense
diversity of the contacts between the various forms
of animate matter, which gives rise to infinitely
variable, rich, often unpredictable human behaviour
and labour activity, social relations, the ideological
sphere, and so on). The dialectical approach, with its
recognition of the rise of qualitatively new phenom¬
ena from preceding development, differing in prin¬
ciple from what preceded them, is undoubtedly ef¬
fective. The tool use of modem man’s ancestors, an¬
cient hominids, is, I think, just such a qualitatively
new phenomenon, with only analogies outside hu¬
man society.

The hypothesis of instinctive labour is only weak¬
ly substantiated. What arguments can be raised against
it? The zoopsychological literature is full of ob¬
servations of how blind, useless, and often even harm¬
ful for an animal, instinctive behavioural acts become
when the animal gets into unaccustomed circumstances,
when its instincts have been developed in another
sphere and are not adapted to new conditions. Adap¬
tive psychophysiological programmes always underlie
instinctive behaviour, programmes determined by
heredity and elaborated by a process of strict selec¬
tion for certain environmental conditions. Instinctive
behaviour therefore forms a narrow area of acts and
in no way exhausts the whole diversity of the be¬
haviour of some animal form. I am not a supporter
of an overwhelming preponderance of automatic
instinctive actions in the behaviour of animals, and of
a very limited field of rational activity (in higher ani¬
mals, of course); the advocates of that hypothesis are
still numerous in spite of the results of experimental
work that obviously contradict it. Animals’ behaviour
actions are obviously not realised through uncondi¬
tioned reflex mechanisms, or just through them.
Their building or other ‘creative, constructive’ activ-

106

ity, however, differs primarily from men’s truly
constructive activity in being narrowly programmed,
with practically no deviation from the programme;
an individual is subject to the call of heredity and re¬
sponds to it, even when it is in conditions in which the
response to the call spells death. Instinct is of limited
good, because it is invariable (or almost so) and auto¬
matic. The beaver’s lodge, the bird’s nest, the bee’s
hive are therefore uniformly similar or vary within
narrow limits; the beaver cannot build an anthill,
or ants dam a stream, even if the stream will flood
their hill.

Instinct is invariable—is that so? It goes without
saying that it is not invariable as regards evolution;
it changes if the group of individuals comes into a dif¬
ferent ecological situation, certain changes occur in
instinctive behaviour also with transmission from gener¬
ation to generation, as soon as the geographical cir¬
cumstances of life or relations with other individuals
or members of other species change. But all these re¬
late to the group evolution of instinctive behaviour
and its dynamic in time.

At the same time instinct is invariable and strictly
automatic in another sense, namely that of its full
repetition and identity in separate individuals. The
action of each individual repeats that of others and
forms behavioural copies whose total yields a ‘build¬
er’, or in general ‘worker effect’. A beaver of a gi¬
ven species does the very same as other beavers; if
we study the sequence of the actions of an ant we
need not spend time on the same detailed study of
the activity of other ants; all birds’ nests are identical
for a species, and so on—we already know the rigid
stereotype of their behaviour. Modifications are bare¬
ly noticeable and, what is more, are of no great im¬
portance within the context of the whole group’s
behaviour.

It may be thought, in connection with this stabil-
*ty of species behaviour that its work results (nest,
lodge, or other structures) vary little with time. It is
difficult to demonstrate that from precise observa¬
tions of the palaeontological material, but when

107

we know the palaeontological history of species, their
main behavioural characteristics are seemingly little
affected by evolutionary changes, alter extremely
slowly and when that happens, as already said, follow
transformations of the species itself in new conditions
of life. But tool activity has, as one of its main
characteristics, a dynamicity in time; acts of creation
play an essential role in it; it rapidly alters its form
and there are frequent revolutionary transitions to a
qualitatively higher level. The difference in princi¬
ple here from so-called animal labour is obvious.

An important feature of ‘worker activity’ strong¬
ly expressed primarily in insects is the division of
functions, sometimes so developed that the separate,
functionally specialised individuals are morpho¬
logically very noticeably different from one another.
An extremely great variety of operations is thus
achieved, through the coordination of instinctive ac¬
tions, which strikes the imagination by its purpose¬
fulness and even seeming purposiveness. But intro¬
duce a note of confusion into this amazing sym¬
phony, break the measured working rhythm by some
artificial interference, and you will see what dozens
of enthusiast entomologists have seen, beginning with
Jean-Henri Fabre: order gives way to chaos; the func-'
tionally specialised individuals prove completely,
helpless in the altered situation.

The physiologically conditioned ‘division of
labour’, and the complex forms of animals’ ‘worker
activity’, which represent the biological path of en¬
suring this complexity, at the same time thus have,
as it happens, no perspective as regards evolution, are
conservative, and a blind-alley of evolution, rather (
than the highroad of evolutionary development. They
are a result of active adaptation but are directed to a
narrow area of life activity, and to its confinement to
a certain ecological niche. The place of each individ¬
ual in the division of functions is predetermined by
heredity. In the process of real labour, specialisation
is very seldom based in practice on the separate
individuals’ biological peculiarities. Lack of strength,
for example, in performing some labour operation

108

I

can be compensated by professional skill. That, too,
is a fundamental difference between true labour and
what is called instinctive labour.

The last point that needs to be made in connection
with this matter is the use of tools. A long discussion
has gone on around what can and should be consid¬
ered a real tool; in it many points of view, both spec¬
ulative and based on concrete observations, have
been expressed. I shall come back to this point at
times in what follows, but here I shall consider a
tool concretely as an object that an animal uses to
get a result more quickly, or in general to attain a
result. One can say definitely (there are many exper¬
imental confirmations of that in tests with animals):
Yes, they use tools: apes use sticks to reach so¬
mething, stones to crack nuts, and so on; ele¬
phants, holding a branch in their trunk, brush them¬
selves with it, driving off flies—but all that is done
sporadically. There is no regularity in it; it may
happen, or it may not, but it is not this that satis¬
fies their main vital needs. Ethologists, who study the
behaviour of animals, have long known that apes
may threaten each other with sticks and branches of
trees, but when things come to a real fight, teeth be¬
gin to be used. Such a brilliant student of the psyche
of anthropoid apes as Wolfgang Kohler wrote about
that decades ago (1922). That is even more justi¬
fied in respect of less organised animals. The use of
an object as a tool to supplement the organs of the
body is an episode, a fleeting moment, not essential¬
ly altering anything in the species’ life.

I want to note that Karl Marx touched on the
problem of instinctive labour in Volume One of Cap¬
ital-, when examining labour as a structural compo¬
nent of the economic system of society, he wrote of
primitive, instinctive forms of labour that remind us
°f the mere animal, and of the stage in the history of
labour when it was still in its first instinctive state.
I suggest that he was not, by any means, counter-
posing animal labour to real labour, and was not distin¬
guishing two special stages in the history of labour,
namely, instinctive, animal-like labour and real la-

109

bour. He did not have as much information as modern
science, of course, but he saw that primitive man’s
labour operations were more permeated by instinc¬
tive acts than the forms of modern technical labour,
and consequently that the whole sphere of behaviour
of ancient hominids was permeated by them to a
greater degree than in modern society. Following
Marx, I do not deny the role of instincts in realisa¬
tion of the first primitive labour processes but recog¬
nise it, yet I am far from hypostasising them in the
form of a hypothesis of animal, instinctive labour.

Tool use or labour activity thus begins with man—
not, of course, just modern man, but the long line of
his hominid ancestors. How does it present itself?
As an assemblage of behavioural acts, as a sphere of
activity in general? Quite obviously it is a process in
which various structural components interact, be¬
tween which there are changing relationships, and at
the same time it is one that maintains the wholeness
and effectiveness of the process itself. It has been ap¬
proached from various angles, and various aspects of
the process have been clarified in numerous inquiries:
the motivating situations, the forms of labour,
the effectiveness of the labour operations, a general
estimate of the productivity of labour, etc. Inquiries
along those lines have been made by economists, psy¬
chologists, and sociologists, who have reconstructed
a picture of the labour processes with great complete¬
ness; I do not need to dwell on all of them; for my
main theme, a survey of the forming of the human
race, only the genesis of labour and the moulding of
its chief structural components are important.

Marx’s singling out of the main, most fundamen-|
tal structural components of labour in Capital, it
seems to me, took in all aspects of labour in an ex¬
haustive way, and at the same time enables us to look
into the innermost aspects of its inner structural or-1
ganisation. There are three of these fundamental
components; viz., the labour itself, i.e. the aggre¬
gate of labour operations and the results of it, properly
speaking, for which the whole process arises; the ob¬
ject of labour, i.e. that which the work is directed and

110

applied to; and the means of labour, i.e. that by
which the labour is effected, the instruments of la¬
bour or tools. All the main structural components of
labour, I repeat, are reflected in this triple system;
at the same time it is heuristic both in itself and in
the genetic aspects, because each of its components,
even the labour act itself in the form of its results,
has a material embodiment in the form of archaeo¬
logical remains that permit us not only to recon¬
struct their chronology but also to lift the curtain on
their origin. The history of the instruments of labour
or tools has been particularly richly demonstrated;
study of those in the early stages of human history
(on which we have little evidence of the other aspects
of material culture) probably constitutes the main
subject of primaeval archaeology. Study of tools, in
the absence of traces of the labour itself and traces
of the original objects of labour, in any case gives us
a chance to form an opinion on the origin of tool
activity as a whole, since the tool itself only originat¬
ed as a means of labour, as satisfaction of labour
needs, and had no other functions. There was a tool,
there was labour: there are no traces of tools the
tool activity can only be guessed at.

In that connection a proper understanding of what
is a true tool, and how it can be recognised and dis¬
tinguished from similar objects, begins to acquire no
little importance. It is a matter, of course, not simp¬
ly of the distinguishing signs of tools; we are famil¬
iar with axes, hammers, and many more technical¬
ly complicated tools from childhood, and do not have
to have a difinition of them in order to know what
We are dealing with. The point is how to distinguish
a primitive tool made from stone, wood, bone, or
horn from an unworked stone or unworked wood.
At first glance that seems quite a simple matter, yet
the history of Old Stone Age archaeology indicates
that it is sometimes a complicated business to recog-
nise a tool in a rough nodule or, on the contrary, not
t° see one in a stone of sometimes quite intricate
( Orm. Fifty years ago many archaeologists still took
e oliths’ seriously, i.e. stones that seemed to reveal

111

traces of artificial working but that in fact proved to
be naturally made, and were most often the results
of the action of streams. After the eoliths there were
often discussions about whether to consider some
collections of the simplest primitive tools to be gen¬
uine tools, or apparent ones; these discussions again
showed how hard it is to distinguish the real crite¬
ria of a tool, but they also deepened our knowledge
in this field and our understanding of the mate¬
rial form and technology of preparing the simplest
tools; we learned how to recognise traces of artifi¬
cial working much more confidently and conse¬
quently to distinguish real tools from a collection of
natural objects.

What then are the main properties of the simplest
tool as we understand it now, and how can we es¬
tablish that we are dealing with a tool, a means of
labour, and not with a natural object? In this connec¬
tion I would stress the special significance of the ob¬
servations of the American archaeologist Winn. It
seems to me that he has succeeded in correctly not¬
ing certain features in the morphology of stone tools
that are indisputable evidence on the one hand of
the main point, i.e. the artificial origin of the given
form as a result of purposive actions, and on the
other hand indicate the forming of certain new psy¬
chological features corresponding to a new stage in
thinking correlative with the development of la¬
bour. Concretely, Winn investigated the archaeolog¬
ical materials of the Issimile site in comparison with
those of Olduvai. In the first case he was dealing with
an interval of time between 170 000 and 330 000
y.a., in the second with an interval between 1 150 000
and 1 600 000 y.a. The archaeological development,
and at the same time the mental structures reflected;
in it, were traced in their evolution over more than a
million years.

Winn distinguishes four elementary and at the same
time fundamental operative properties of the psyche
that can be seen reflected in a stone industry: re¬
cognition of the relation of the part to the whole,
and vice versa of the whole to the part; awareness o»l

112

the relationship of the parts; awareness of space-time
relations; and finally, understanding of the identi¬
ty of objects or operations. These four mental struc¬
tures were demonstrated, as a reflection of an objec¬
tively existing stone inventory, in the morphology
of the stone tools from the Issimile site, achievement
of the needed form by means of a minimum expendi¬
ture of labour, i.e. by means of minimum retouching
with a clear understanding of the geometry of the
future tool (first property); preparation of a straight
cutting edge, when the force of the successive blows
was related and their whole combination can be seen
as a single operation (second property); ability to
give the tool bilateral symmetry (third property); and
finally ability to achieve symmetry of the tool at
various cross-sections (fourth property). At the same
time, when passing to the Olduvai industry, we
can note only rare examples of bilateral symmetry,
and also, as it were, an approximation to under¬
standing the significance for the making of a tool
of a constant radius in the cross-section. Even these
simplest phenomena are not traceable in the earlier
material from Olduvai. There was consequently a de¬
velopment of form such as demonstrates a regular
complicating of labour and of the human psyche,
with the transition from making rudimentary types
of tool to an already quite highly developed industry.

The answer to the question posed of at what his¬
torical moment a nodule was converted into a tool
can be drawn with sufficient certainty from what
has been said. All four moments in the making of
tools, and correspondingly in the psyche, seemingly
arose already in the earliest period of the history of
tool activity. In accordance with the criterion of the
origin of one of these four properties (achievement of
the necessary shape through retouching, prepara¬
tion of a cutting edge; bilateral symmetry; and achieve¬
ment of such symmetry at various cross-sections),
I shall call an object with one of them a tool, even
w hen it is hardly visible. We are looking for one of
these signs; if we find it we can speak of the exist-
e nce of tool use.

In that way we not only tie up tool use with
ancient hominids but also have a still quite objective,
though not very perfect criterion, that helps fix the
beginning. That fixing would be more objective
if we could base it, in accordance with the structure
of tool use developed by Marx, not only on finds
of the instruments of labour, i.e. tools, but also
if we could analyse the first traces of the labour oper¬
ations, and the objects they were applied to, em¬
bodied in material remains. But, as I have already
stressed, such traces are rare and fall into our hands
irregularly, and still cannot be interpreted unambigu¬
ously, so that definition of the beginning of tool use
depends above all on an objective distinguishing of
the first tools. So let us return, with a slight reserva¬
tion, to our formula already expressed above: there is
a tool, there is labour: there are no traces of tools,
we can only guess at tool use or labour.

The Ecological Prerequisites for the Transition
to Tool Use

Before passing directly to a consideration of the first
steps in tool use, I need to touch on the ecological
circumstances of the transition, i.e. on the question
of the way of life of the initial ancestral forms and
the changes in the environment during the transi¬
tion from ape-like ancestors to man. In the previous
chapter we discussed those aspects of anthropogene-
sis that enable us to consider it not only as a social
process but also as a natural, biological one; the back¬
ground of this natural, biological process was a defi¬
nite geographical environment whose distinguishing
features had a significant influence on many of the
events of anthropogenesis; we are thus warranted in
considering the ecological prerequisites of homini-
sation and the transition to tool activity in a special
section.

This is a field in which the theory of anthropo¬
genesis borders particularly closely on the most var¬
ied sciences of nature and its history, viz., geography,

114

palaeogeography, palaeontology, geology, zoology,
botany, and palaeobotany. Only a thorough summing
up of the data and observations of all these disciplines,
and their objective comparison with one another, and
their arrangement in a consecutive chronological series
enable us to reconstruct the geographical medium
relatively fully in which the humanising of the ape
took place, to reconstruct the animal and vegetable
kingdoms at the boundary of the Pliocene and Pleis¬
tocene, and to get an idea of the geological and
palaeogeographic changes in the natural situation
that both favourably and unfavourably affected the
course of the evolutionary process that led to the form¬
ing of hominids. Work has been going on in these
fields for several decades now, aimed at reconstruct¬
ing the natural environment precisely of man’s an¬
cestors; it now embraces not only European sites but
also Asian and African ones: the natural complexes
and climatic characteristics have been brought out
that accompanied the succession of ice ages in Europe
and Asia, and of wet and dry seasons in Africa; and
finally some progress has been made in synchronising
the events of geological and palaeontological history
on the different continents at the end of the Pliocene
and in the Pleistocene (Butzer, 1971; Alexeev, 1978).

In connection with the vagueness discussed above
of our ideas of the place where the human race took
shape, the concrete palaeogeographical conditions of
one region or another come to the fore when a hy¬
pothesis of the geographical conditions of the earliest
stages of hominisation is being created that claims to
be a model for the whole initial period of anthropo-
genesis. Concretely it is a matter of the geographi¬
cal prerequisites for the forming of the earliest mem¬
ber of the hominid triad, i.e. upright walking, be¬
cause it is that, plus the changes in the behavioural
stereotypes and the complicating of behaviour in gen¬
eral, that had as its result the freeing of the front
limbs from their support function, and so provided
a most important stimulus for tool use. The authors
°f theoretical works touching on this theme in one
w ay or another have quite justifiably concentrated on

8 *

115

explaining the circumstances of the transition to up¬
right walking. Just to take the geographical aspect,,
all the hypotheses proposed, also quite justifiably,
rest on recognition in one form or another of a tran¬
sition from one environment to another, i.e. change
of ecological niche. Without such a transition it is dif-]
ficult to explain the changes in locomotion and the
change from movement on all four to orthostatic
movement, i.e. in an erect position. But the fact of a
transition to another environment is recognised differ¬
ently, of course, from passage from one to a similar
terrain to a complete change of ecological niche, which
explains the variety of standpoints on this matter.

When we generalise these points of view they can
be reduced to two models: according to one the tran¬
sition to walking erect happened in a rocky locali¬
ty; the other makes the main factor in upright walk¬
ing a transition from forest to an open, treeless
terrain. The hypothesis of a rocky terrain was given
broad, many-sided substantiation by the Russian zool¬
ogist and palaeontologist Sushkin; though basically
an ornithologist who left several fundamental books
on the birds of various areas of Eurasia, he did not
shun general questions of biology, and in particular
worked out an outstandingly important scheme of
the development of Central Asian fauna. The hypothe¬
sis of a rocky terrain, as one may call his hypothe¬
sis of the forming of hominids was a partial expres¬
sion of his general views on the stages of the evolu¬
tion of the animal kingdom in Central Asia.

Sushkin (1928) assumed rapid rates of develop¬
ment of fauna (land and winged) in Central Asia over
the last scores of millions of years. The exceptional¬
ly rich terrestrial forms of life there predicted later
by Borisyak, and demonstrated by Andrews’ Amer¬
ican expedition and Soviet expeditions, confirmed his
initial assumption with concrete palaeontological
evidence.

A rocky, mountainous terrain, with comparative¬
ly narrow river valleys, raised high above sea 1<
in a number of cases, which alternated with broad
expanses of steppe or plains, constituted the pre

116

dominant feature of the geography of Central Asia,
as it did throughout the whole Quaternary period.
The aridity of the climate was also a very important
distinguishing feature. In those conditions higher
primates that lived in mountain localities were dis¬
tinguished by land locomotion and moved on all
fours. But the need to rise on their hind legs during
movement so as to survey the locality carefully from
behind boulders, like the change of posture of the
body to an upright one in order to climb cliffs, must
have served as prerequisites for predominant surviv¬
al of individuals that had a more strongly expressed
capacity to stand upright and to remain so for a long
time. It was rock-climbing that Sushkin considered the
functional acquisition, with which the transition began
to upright walking and freeing of the arms of their sup¬
port function. That approach did not become predo¬
minant subsequently, but has continued to be defen¬
ded by individual specialists down to the present time.

Attention to African material switched interest to
the ecological features of the African continent and
the history of the terrains predominant on it. A con¬
ception took shape that the transition to upright walk¬
ing was not a consequence of rock-climbing but was
due to the exit of anthropoid apes from the tropical
forest into other conditions. It has no definite author
since it was put forward practically simultaneously by
several British, American, and Soviet workers. Geo¬
graphically it boils down to this, that the area of the
tropical forests began to shrink, owing to sponta¬
neous ‘plunderous economy’, which caused a reduc¬
tion of the customary food resources and led to over¬
population of the level of tropical forest normally
occupied by primates. The geographical factor in¬
tensified selection and, since the anthropoids were
not apparently specialised forms (especially those
that gave rise to man), selection began to transform
the morphology in the direction of possibilities of
extending the ecological niche. The anthropoids
were forced to come down onto the ground and mas¬
ter a new environment, i.e. the tropical savanna.

On this sparsely wooded land they encountered

117

new, very dangerous carnivores and, with the relative
weakness of their horde organisation and the small
size of the horde, could become easy prey to enemies.
The only way to preserve the species in the new eco¬
logical niche was, on the one hand, to survive the
struggle with carnivores and, on the other hand, not
to become extinct through lack of customary food.
The first was surmounted by transition to an upright
posture of the body and freeing of the arms of their
support function, and the development of skills in
using sticks and stones as means of defence and
implements, and also by cohesion of the horde and
the forming of ever stronger collective habits within
it, the second by transition to a meat diet. But both
were not only defence against enemies and hunger Jl
but also a powerful stimulus to further development. I
Engels had already written about the significance of I
a meat diet for intensifying metabolism and in gener- II
al for complicating many physiological functions, I
above all the brain. In this hypothesis of a change of«
ecological niche in the transition to anthropogenesis I
there is room for a forest, arboreal stage, but on the ||
other hand there are still many other difficulties: II
that of mastering a new ecological niche, the behav- jl
ioural and physiological difficulties of passing from a I
vegetarian diet to a meat one, etc.

What are the present-day possibilities of recon- f
structing the ecological situation in which the initial
ancestral forms lived? In principle, starting from pres¬
ent-day knowledge of palaeogeography, and of the flora I
and fauna of the Quaternary period, we can reconstruct
the Early Quaternary landscape of South and East
Africa with some certainty as a quite hilly one with
rocky outcrops and steppe elements. The Siwalik
Hills in India were also quite rich in the same elements.

In general the similarity between the topographical
geography of Central Asia, East and South Africa was
seemingly much more pronounced than it is today.

There are hypotheses that draw on certain palaeO'
geographical observations of intense tectonic move¬
ments and uplifts of major platformal sectors at the
boundary of the Tertiary and Quaternary periods in

118

South and East Africa to explain the process of an-
thropogenesis (Matyushin, 1974). Such phenomena,
too, are not ruled out, in principle, for the palaeo-
geographical situation of the Central Asian sites (the
foothills of the Himalayas were already being drawn
geographically into the Himalayan mountain system);
that epoch, too (i.e. that of the transition from the
Tertiary to the Quaternary eras), or a rather earlier
one, was a time of intensive mountain building in
Eurasia. Mountain building must have caused a height¬
ening of background radiation, and man’s direct an¬
cestors, and perhaps the early hominids, too, might
have lived in conditions of heightened radiation. If
we accept that, it must be thought that such radia¬
tion very probably had a genetic effect and possibly
played a significant role in the early stage of an-
thropogenesis. But that is a field of supposition,
though seemingly promising, while observations of
the similarity of the Central Asian, Himalayan and
African Late Tertiary and Early Quaternary terrains
have an objective character.

Hills with rocky outcrops, intersected by valleys,
many of which were localities partially covered by
scrub, with separate large trees, and in places forming
open country, a dry, hot climate, and a very diverse
flora and fauna were roughly the terrain and the cli¬
mate in which anthropogenesis played out its first
act, and in which the humanising of the initial form
took place, i.e. the transition to walking erect, and
freeing of the arms, and the making of tools.

At the present time anthropoid primates are un¬
doubtedly forms with shrinking habitat, which used
to be much more extensive. It can be thought that
the initial form (some species or set of species) passed
to a habitat in a savanna similar to, but not iden¬
tical with, tropical forest. The reflection of the forest
stage in hominids’ morphology is explained as a herit¬
age from a remote stage of evolution strictly speak-
tng preceding the process of anthropogenesis itself.
The transition from a climbing type of locomotion
ln trees to climbing on rocks and cliffs, plus the si¬
multaneous need to move quite quickly on the

119

ground, is thought to explain the origin of upright
walking and its advantages in those conditions over
locomotion on all fours. The size of the first collec¬
tive cells or bands had hardly changed, but the group
itself (it must be thought) became rather more mobile
and could range a bigger territory, and use it for
hunting and food-gathering. That was probably the i
first stage in humanising, and its real, concrete em-1
bodiment in certain conditions of the environment 1
can be so imagined.

The mastering of upright walking and the freeing
of the front limbs from a support function opened
up immense possibilities for mastering a ground eco¬
logical niche and stimulated a transition to the use
of sticks and stones as tools and weapons. The need
for defence against carnivores in ground conditions
must have closed the ranks of the small band, leading
to the development within it of certain behavioural
mechanisms of mutual support and collective action.
The mutual support and assistance that Kropotkin
(1907) wrote so eloquently about, as a powerful en¬
gine of progress in the animal kingdom, was reinforced
precisely at that stage of anthropogenesis, it must
be thought, and acquired the features from which
purely human forms of these qualities arose. It was
very probable that defence included the use of stones
and sticks as defensive weapons which, true, must
have been the result of a long evolution of behaviour
when we recall behavioural observations by W. Kohler
(1929) of how modern anthropoid apes discard
sticks in a serious fight. And from use of sticks and
stones for defence it would be natural to find a
transition to their use as tools. The problem ol
the ecological prerequisites of the transition to tool
use or labour can be tackled in this way.

The Beginning of Tool Use and Economic
Activity

In his Origin of the Family, Private Property , and the
State Frederick Engels first drew a firm line between

120

the two chronological stages in the history of man¬
kind’s economic activity, viz., appropriative and pro¬
ductive. The appropriative form depends wholly and
completely on nature; with it man simply appro¬
priates products from nature and does not produce
anything. All the tool use of ancient man had an
exclusively appropriative character; people consumed
but did not produce. Hunting, food-gathering, and fish¬
ing are all forms of appropriating ready products
of nature, and nothing new is created during these
forms of labour; when the food resources in the form
of natural stocks of plant and animal food were exhaust¬
ed in a certain area, man’s forefathers were forced to
move to a new region. Hence, almost full depen¬
dence on the seasonal rhythm of natural processes and
natural disasters, hence a very mobile, wandering or
semi-wandering mode of life. Historically and eth-
nographically recorded societies—the Australians of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the hunting
tribes of Siberia on the arrival of the Russians, the
hunting tribes of the North American Indians in the
eighteenth century—give us a faint idea of such an
economy, but an idea partially distorted by contacts
with the European cultural world. The dependence
on the geographical environment, the complete sea¬
sonal conditionality of the economic cycle, and a
mobile way of life with the organisation of temporary
camps are quite fully illustrated by the examples
of these and many other primitive groups. But these
are all people of the modem type and are much more
advanced morphologically, physiologically, and men¬
tally than the ancient hominids whose tool and eco¬
nomic activity we are now discussing.

To what extent do the criteria adopted and sub¬
stantiated above to distinguish the family of hominids
coincide with tools? In other words, can any satis¬
factory coincidence in time be found between the ori¬
gin of upright walking and the appearance of the
first tools? For upright walking, as I have already
repeated, freed the arms, and from that angle was, as
Engels wrote, a very important precondition of the
development of labour.

L

121

The traces of fire discovered by Dart (1948) with
the remains of what he named Australopithecus pro-
metheus in honour of them (which we mentioned in
the preceding chapter) gave rise to sharp disputes,
and in the end did not get convincing factual or
theoretical confirmation. But Dart’s quests in another
field, i.e. his attempts to prove the existence of regular
tool use by Australopithecus and to reconstruct its
forms, deserve full attention. Dart found an immense
number of bones from the fauna of the South African
caves with the remains of Australopithecus that had,
in his view, been touched up for more convenient use
as tools. Long bones and horns had striated surfaces
that suggested regular percussive use. From an exa¬
mination of the drawings and photographs appen¬
ded to his paper, it is difficult to avoid the impression l
that the horns of antelopes and the diaphyses of the
long bones of large mammals, with traces of use as a
striking weapon, were really splendid means of de¬
fence and attack (Dart, 1957). In some cases they had
undoubtedly been given some form in addition so as
to be more convenient to hold or to increase their
effectiveness as a percussion tool. It would take me
too far into the depths of archaeology to go specially
into the discussion around these observations, and it
is only the summing up that perhaps interests me, na¬
mely whether the arguments for an artificial origin of
the tools from bone are convincing or not, and if
convincing, how far. There is now a sceptical atti¬
tude to Dart’s observations (Brain, 1970, 1976), but <
on the whole they are finding their way into science
more and more, occupying in it the place of evi¬
dence of Australopithecines’tool use (see, for example,
Walberg, 1970).

If we consider not only regular, but also delibe¬
rate use of bones and horns as tools (however weak¬
ly and imperfectly worked), as an established fact,
and it looks as if there are now no great doubts about
it, then it suggests important conclusions about the
making of tools by Australopithecines and the pur¬
posive character of their tool use. But as a matter of
fact the making of tools and purposive tool use are

122

most important properties allowing us to distinguish
it (as we tried to show above) from the instinctive
behaviour of animals, and to consider it labour in the
full sense of the word.

If we assume that, it is difficult to accept the
position held in the Soviet literature (Kochetkova,
1967) that contains an attempt to correlate the stages
of development of the morphology and culture of
ancient hominids. Kochetkova based herself on
Marx’s statement, already cited above, that there are
three moments in any form of labour: purposive ac¬
tivity, i.e. labour itself; the object of labour; and the
means of labour. When we recognise even partial, pre¬
liminary working of bone and horn by Australopi-
thecines as the existence of purposive, purposeful
tool-making, the object of labour is external nature
in the shape of animals and plants caught and collect¬
ed in the course of hunting and food-gathering, while
the means of labour, in the first stage of its devel¬
opment, are the bodily organs of the Australopithe-
cines themselves, in addition to purposively used sto¬
nes, sticks, and bones; initially, of course, the arms
and hands would retain a residual significance as
tools. For it is difficult to imagine that all the struc¬
tural components of labour arose in ready-made form
and immediately formed the requisite combination.
That would be anti-evolutionary and unhistorical. It
is therefore impossible to agree with the main con¬
clusion of the existence of all three elements of la¬
bour only in the Chellean epoch, or in the final count
among archanthropes.

The attempt to treat the bone industry of Austra-
lopithecines as a kind of extension of the natural
organs of defence and attack, i.e. of the hands and
arms, by natural objects, and not as artificial imple¬
ments, does not seem very convincing. The grounds
for such a view are the slowness of their evolution,
not exceeding the rate of the evolution of the mor¬
phological features of the human organism in the
first stage of anthropogenesis. Without dwelling on
the disputability both of the estimates of the rate of
changes in tools and the organs of the human body,

123

and of the direct comparison of them, one can point
to what is essentially a counter-argument, namely
that if we come across purposive activity and (as 1
hope I demonstrated convincingly above) if we have
an object of labour and means of labour (be they 1
sporadically the bodily organs proper of Australo-
pithecines), then we must conclude, in spite of the
view that labour only began among Pithecanthropes,
that there were the rudiments of labour among
Australopithecines, and that it is impossible to re¬
duce it simply to instinctive acts like the behaviour
of animals. The great stability of tools in the first
stages of their evolution, and the slowness of their
changes are also not an argument against their recog¬
nition as tools; everything evolves in nature and so¬
ciety and there are no phenomena without move¬
ment, but the rate of evolutionary changes is not a
component of the definition of the phenomena. The
phenomena themselves, in nature and in society, are
classified by the forms of the motion of matter and
not by the intensity of the movement, i.e. not by the
rate of exchange of energy, but by structural levels.

Twenty or thirty years ago no few arguments were
advanced against the reality, i.e. artificial origin, of
the pebble industry, or so-called Kafuan culture in
Africa (Clark, 1962; Kochetkova, 1972), which re¬
duced its singularity to the results of the natural
shaping as it were of natural stone; subsequent
inquiry, however, has demonstrated artificial character
and deep antiquity of many of the early finds, dating
them to 2 000 000 to 2 500 000 y.a.

The culture of these tools has been called Olduvan
or Olduvai (Leakey, 1965). At present it is known
from many sites in Koobi Fora and Olduvai in East
Africa (Isaac, 1978; Isaac and Harris, 1978). It con¬
sists of rough, quite shapeless tools found among a
great number of fragments of quartz and other hard
rocks. Yet a certain recurrence is observable in theii
form; they are found in small areas among a layer ol
bones and tortoise shells, the fragments of which in¬
dicate that they were broken by means of stone tools-
The genuineness of the tools is confirmed by ex-

124

perimental work and failure to obtain worked tools
of such shape by natural means (for example, by the
mechanical action of water and the striking of stone
on stone caused by it), by observation of the condi¬
tions of their geological deposition, and by the char¬
acter itself of the touching up of the pebbles, which
demonstrates a certain, uniform retouching. The cer¬
tain, perhaps not very marked, recurrence of the
shapes of the tools and character of the cultural layer
in which they are found, thus disprove the sceptical
voices still to be heard, and force us to see in the Ol-
duvan culture the first stage in the development of
human material culture, and the result of deliberate,
purposive labour in its rudimentary forms.

Some of the tools at that stage of human evolu¬
tion were made from bone and horn. Percussive tools
were also seemingly made from such accessible and
pliable material as wood, but remains of them have
naturally not been preserved. The investigations car¬
ried out already demonstrate quite a high level of
the nascent society even at that unitial stage—traces
of shelters and even living sites or base camps, though
temporary, complex tools of diverse forms, and the
use of many components of the natural environment
as food (Grigoriev, 1977). Thus, already at the dawn
of tool use, we find a variety in the forms of tools
that reflects their functional diversity. That refutes
traditional statements that the transition from the
early to later epochs of the Palaeolithic was a path of
evolution from a single tool, the Chellean hand axe
or chopper, to several varied forms.

What were these primitive tools used for? With
the regular gathering of plant food (though its
composition is not clear) stone tools could have been
used to dig up edible roots, dig open the burrows of
small animals, and break down the hills of tropical in¬
sects like termites. When the burrows of more or less
lar ge rodents were being dug open whose teeth were
9Uite dangerous to man, they must have been killed
hy bone or wooden clubs. A stone tool helped to
hay or cut up a carcase. But its main role, it would
seem, was in separating meat from bones; perhaps the

125

remains of the meal of a carnivore, although one can
hardly regard that as the main or one of the main
sources of food of early hominids. In the conditions!
of a hot and quite humid climate a carcase, and even
more the remains of one, would decompose too
quickly for it to be used even after a short interval. In
conditions of complete dryness, however, rapid
mummification would set in, which would also pre¬
vent full consumption of the meat of dead animals.
It was this impossibility of preserving meat that ap¬
parently led to a constant, purposive search for food
and hunting practically every day, and at the same
time encouraged an active mode of life. But the many
horns of antelopes and the skulls of baboons damaged
by severe fractures found together with remains of
Australopithecines cannot be interpreted other than
as evidence of the hunting of large animals—lower
apes and ungulates. How can we picture such a hunt?
Ungulates usually live in quite big herds, and hunting
them would require either long tracking or conceal¬
ment and sudden attack. Long pursuit even by a
biped with weapons in its hands is difficult to imagine
as regards ungulates, which run faster and have more
endurance than primates. As for concealment and drive
hunt, they obviously constituted forms of hunting
that became basic in the groups of ancient hominids
represented by Australopithecines after the mastery
of upright walking. One group of hunters hid and
frightened animals in this form of hunting while
another waited for them at a spot where they would
inevitably have to pass. During the hunt clubs of
bone, horn, and wood were seemingly the main
means of killing animals, while pebble tools could
have been used to flay the carcases. Such hunting
undoubtedly extended the stocks and consumption
of meat, introduced a supplementary component of
order into the interaction of co-operation of the
members of the group and structure of the initial in¬
tragroup relations, and inculcated habits of collective
action.

I must develop the subject already mentioned above
and which can be designated the everyday sphen-'

126

of life. The concept of everyday life has a more or
less definite sense as regard modern society, in ac¬
cordance with the quite widely held views of eth¬
nographers, and is quite independent of the other
phenomena of present-day life. But in the conditions
of the primitive life of bands of ancient hominids
with a quite amorphous and diffuse structure, it is
difficult do distinguish separate functional spheres,
which later obtained an independent existence; in
this case we understand by the everyday sphere every¬
thing that lay outside tbeir economic activity and
constituted the inner, domestic (so to say) life of
those communities that we call primaeval hordes or
bands, and about which I shall speak below. This
includes, in the first place, the organisation of camps
and shelters, and also the cycle and periodicity it¬
self of life. The anthropoid apes, as can now be
judged from the many observations available, build
nests for one night and in practice lead a ranging
mode of life within a certain territory. One can sup¬
pose that the early Australopithecines did not differ
essentially from them. But such a position could hard¬
ly have lasted long. More developed forms of hunt¬
ing raised its effectiveness. The initially slow and lat¬
er increasingly progressive lengthening of the period
of childhood (infancy), required a transition to set¬
tled, even if temporary, campsites in which the func¬
tions listed could be performed with greater success.
All the facts available about the stage both of Austra¬
lopithecines and of Pithecanthropes give us a picture
°f temporary camps, used, nevertheless, for more or
less lengthy times. Small overhangs or rock shelters,
and the open spaces in front of them were usually
chosen for campsites.

It thus seems there are grounds to accept on the
w hole the idea of a coincidence of the morphological
cn teria (upright walking and freeing of the arms)
an d the tool criteria (purposive making and using of
t0 °ls) of the boundaries of the hominid family. The
transition to erect walking was obviously such a pow-
crf ul stimulus for mastering new territories and for-
niln 8 new relations with the environment, and so in-

127

tensively encouraged geographical settling apart and
an ecological diversity of the life of the ancient ho-
minids, that it could not have helped leading to more
active use of the freed upper limbs as an immediate
consequence, to an intensification of manipulating
objects, and later to their constant use and transfor-1
mation into tools. On the other hand no other J

morphological criterion of the differentiation of;]
the hominid family yields a similar coincidence j
with tool one.

To conclude this section I must thus stress that I
the legitimacy of the morphological criterion of the
hominid family, that I have adopted, substantiated
both by direct anatomical observations and indirect
theoretical considerations, has also been demonstrat¬
ed by its coincidence in general with the criteria
of tool use. The finds of remains of Prezinjanthropus
together with a primitive stone industry demon¬
strate this quite clearly; at the same time study of the
foot of Prezinjanthropus leaves no doubt that perfect
bipedalism had already been developed at that stage
of evolution. As for the other Australopithecines,
in the absence of indisputable evidence of theia j

having made stone tools, there are good grounds for
ascribing constant, purposive fashioning of took
from the bones and horns of animals to them. Use
of wooden clubs also seems probable at that stage,
but since wood survives poorly in the ground this
proposition has no conclusive force whatever. Still,
the known very old sites of tools from petrified wood
in South-East Asia (Movius, 1944) is indirect evi>
dence of the use of wood as material for making tools
in the Lower Palaeolithic.

The anthropological material, plus, of course;
archaeology, greatly widens the chronological f
boundaries of human society, as we see, and pushes
its sources far back compared with views that circu¬
lated until recently. If we use the determinations of
the absolute age of the finds made so far, including
Prezinjanthropus, the first rudiments of tool use, and
with it the beginning of human society, must be fur¬
ther back than 1500 million years from modern times

128

(the absolute age of Prezinjanthropus is estimated
at 1 750 000 y.a.; and the new finds of fossilised bones
together with tools in Africa—in the Omo Valley
in Ethiopia, and on the shore of Lake Turkana—are
dated at roughly 2 500 000 y.a.) The age of man and
society is thereby increased by a factor of nearly
three compared with the views that prevailed in the
anthropological, geological, and historical literature
comparatively recently, i.e. two or three decades ago,
when the age of finds of Pithecanthropes was estimat¬
ed at approximately a million years. At present it
can be doubled. Human society, fixed by the be¬
ginning of tool use or labour, thus had much more
time to realise its institutions and their history than
our boldest imagination could hitherto have pre¬
dicted.

The Development of Tool Use and
Tool-Making

What degree of correspondence is there between the
subdivision of the subfamily of Homininae into two
species, discussed above, and the stages of devel¬
opment of stone industry during the Palaeolithic?
These stages are generally divided into the Lower and
Upper Palaeolithic. The boundary thus corresponds
here approximately to that between palaeoanthropes
and modern man, and not between palaeoanthropes
and archanthropes. There is consequently a distinct
non-conformity of the results of archaeological and
anthropological research if we adduce the interpre¬
tation of the latter defended here. It is therefore
necessary first to examine how serious and unresolv-
able this contradiction is, but before we do that
it would still be expedient to give a general picture
°f the main stages of the history of material culture
Prior to the appearance of man of the modern type,
as they have been distinguished in archaeological in¬
vestigations of long standing.

From the archanthropes, represented by the ge¬
nus Pithecanthropus, we pass to the epoch of the Low-

*-294

129

-

er Palaeolithic in the true sense, i.e. to the epoch
of the predominant use of stone, mainly flint, to make
tools, which either superseded both bone and wood,
or limited their use to certain narrow contexts
of the fashioning of certain auxiliary tools. It is in
that age that we find a regular recurrence of the
forms of stone tools, the assemblage of which grad¬
ually becomes more intricate over the whole of the
Palaeolithic. The main shape in the initial stage of
the development of Lower Palaeolithic technique
was, for many tens or hundreds of thousands of
years, the hand axe, i.e. a bilaterally worked egg-
shaped tool, both cutting edges of which met at the
tip, while the broader part was convenient to hold in
the hand. Contemporary understanding of this
form’s purpose hardly changed from that of its first
discoverers back in the last quarter of the last centu¬
ry; it was seemingly not invented for one repeated
operation, and its functional purpose was quite wide
and varied. The development of inquiry in the study
of Lower Palaeolithic relics, especially in new areas,
has shown, however, that the old views of the hand
axe as practically the sole tool of the initial Chel-
lean epoch of the Lower Palaeolithic were based
on inadequate knowledge and selective choice of
them, as the most striking shape among the total
number of tools in Lower Palaeolithic sites. In
addition to the hand axe, Lower Palaeolithic man
quite often made choppers, rough chopping tools
more amorphous and less stable in shape, which
were probably mainly used for percussive cutting
operations.

For the Acheulian stage we have famous sites with
huge assemblages of animal bones, i.e. permanent
nomad hunters’ encampments. The horse and gener¬
ally all ungulates have a markedly predominant place
among the objects of the hunt, which means that
there was a gradual increase in the significance, and
perfecting of the methods of the drive hunt, from the
Australopithecines to the end of the stage of archan-
thropes. Consumption of meat was becoming more
regular as a result, although it is difficult to imag-

130

; n e that this circumstance completely ruled out the
catching of small animals and food-gathering. Man is
a n omnivorous animal, but it was seemingly then
that animal protein became a main and quite regu¬
lar component of the diet.

In the following Neanderthal stage we meet the
Mousterian stage of the technique of working stone.
Tools have become predominantly pointed, contin¬
uing the technological line of bilateral working, and
scrapers, worked on one side. Many tools are made
from flakes struck from a stone core, while the core
itself, which has acquired a disc-like shape, is also spe¬
cially worked so as to give it a tool function. The re¬
touching, by which the cutting edge is made, becomes
much finer and geometrically more regular, and
the variety of shapes with a standard regularity of the
dominant forms increases. In short, there is signif¬
icant progress not only in technical knowledge, i.e.
knowledge of the properties of various kinds of flint
and of the best ways of working them, but also in
techniques, i.e. in manipulating objects, precision of
striking movements, and, finally, ability to adjust the
force and direction of the blows and observe the repe¬
tition of movements. The complicating of cultural
traditions also affected the character of hunting (con¬
firmation of which can be seen in the passage to hunt¬
ing large carnivores), with maintenance of the role
of the drive hunt, when the character of the fauna
and geographical circumstances made it possible.
Campsites in the south of Western Europe, with their
big accumulations of the skulls of cave bears (which
were much larger than the modern brown bear even
m its biggest varieties), are quite indicative in that
respect. The transition to such hunting meant a fur¬
ther increase in weaponry, and extension of the
objects hunted, and a growing independence of
Neanderthals’ means of life support. The use and main¬
tenance of fire undoubtedly came within the sphere
°f labour and the range of economic activity and
duties of early hominids. The first evidence of its
c °nstant use is at the end of the Neanderthal stage and
Vvas discovered in encampments of the Chinese Pi-

9 »

L

131

thecanthropes near Peking (although some sporadic
use of fire was possibly known among Australopithe-
cines, as is evidenced by the discovery of remains of
Australopithecus prometheus mentioned above), but
fire had undoubtedly become a regular feature of life
of the Neanderthal stage. It had two important conse¬
quences in various spheres of the life of Neander¬
thals. One was presumably linked with the role of fire,
and of some sort of pitch torches or simply burning
brands in the chasing of ungulates and hunting of
big carnivores. Fire undoubtedly greatly increased
the effectiveness of such hunts. The second con¬
sequence of the everyday use of fire was the consump¬
tion initially of roast meat, and later of boiled. From
the end of the archanthrope stage animal protein
consequently entered the organism in a cooked, more
assimilable form, which was not without its effect on
the evolutionary morphological progress through rais- I
ing the activity of metabolism and creating more fa- '
vourable conditions for the growth and development I
of the child generation in the groups of late Pithe- |
canthropes and especially of Neanderthals.

In the late stages of the period of archanthropes
temporary camping places gave way to permanent en-' J
campments that existed, it would seem, for at least I
scores of years, the reason being the complicating of
hunting and transition to hunting herds of ungulates,
and later (at the Neanderthal stage) to hunting large
carnivores, and the complicating in that connection
of group economic activity, the invention of means of
making fire, knowledge of its properties, and an in¬
crease in the variety of food. What was the geograph¬
ical location of these encampments? The late Pithe¬
canthropes were no longer afraid to use quite deep
caves and inhabited them extensively. That applied in
particular to Neanderthals. But the next step was
made at the Neanderthal stage, viz., transition to the
building of groundlevel dwellings on open campsites
when the conditions warranted it. Australopithe-
cines and Pithecanthropes also built surface structures-
of some sort episodically (Grigoriev, 1977; Mania,
Dietzel, 1980), but their traces are very indetermi'

nate. Growing mastery of the ecumene had, as a
consequence, mastery of plains, convenient as a habi¬
tat and abounding in game. The need for defence
against carnivores in such areas and possibly, too, the
relative severity of the conditions would have com¬
pelled the building quite regularly at first of primitive
surface structures (seemingly frameworks of branches
reinforced by stones, and covered with skins), re¬
mains of which have been discovered during ar¬
chaeological excavation of Acheulian and Mouste-
rian sites (Chernysh, 1960; Bourdier, 1967).

After this, of necessity brief, and very general sur¬
vey of the main stages of the development of labour
at the dawn of mankind’s history, it is legitimate to
pass to the question I posed at the beginning of this
section, namely, what is the correspondence between
the stages of development of material culture and the
classification of the hominid family argued and adopt¬
ed above? The division of the Palaeolithic into Low¬
er and Upper in itself is already a certain result of
the abstraction and generalisation of the data and is
not an empirical observation. This generalisation, it
is true, rests on very weighty and indisputable facts,
i.e., the spread of dwellings with hearths in the Upper
Palaeolithic, which testifies to a relatively high level
of social organisation; burials with a rich set of orna¬
ments, which suggests the development of rites and a
cult of the dead, and so of primitive religious no¬
tions; diverse forms of art (sculptures from stone,
clay, and bone; drawings on stones and bones; cave
paintings); and finally a significant stage in the evo¬
lution of the stone industry itself (the appearance of
many new forms of tool; the production of tools used
to make other tools, etc.). All these facts are well
known; it would be stupid to deny them or call them
m question, and they make the position of advocates
pf two stages in the history of the Palaeolithic very
impressive.

But there are certain weaknesses in that position,
that I must touch on. The first, main one, which is of
? general character, is that all the facts are exam-
ttied in a static and not a dynamic way, and not

enough attention is paid to the point that we find all
these phenomena in an already quite developed form
in the Upper Palaeolithic epoch, and that a long in¬
terval of time must have been needed to reach that lev-1
el of development.

That also applies to the same extent to the burial
rites, to development of surface shelters or dwel¬
lings, and to primitive art, about which I shall now
speak. It is difficult to imagine that the rise
and ultimate moulding of all these fundamentally
new phenomena in human culture happened imme¬
diately, all of a sudden, and that their genesis was not
a protracted agonising process of gradual crystallisa¬
tion of certain rudiments of phenomena that had
arisen much earlier than the phenomena themselves,
realisation of the prerequisites that had already taken
shape in the nature of palaeoanthropes. Quite
weighty facts can also be adduced in favour of thii
view.

The long polemic around Neanderthal burials, and 1
the attempts made during it to deny their cult charac-<
ter, and to treat them as the result of chance, unpre¬
meditated actions, have shown that the advocates
of these attempts are wrong and cannot convin¬
cingly dispute all the facts that witness to the con¬
trary. The facts are these: quite a distinct grave in
a number of cases; the position in a sleeping pose;
the filling in of earth; and the discovery of stone tool*
around the deceased. But the orienting of the corpse
on an east-west line, indisputably established in
ten cases of undisturbed burials (Okladnikov,
1952), is very important in this connection, and at
the same time is evidence of a first empirical obser¬
vation of natural forces and the recurrence of their
action, and of a desire to put the deceased in some
sort of relation with them. If we add the certain, reg¬
ular character of the arrangement of horns around
the burial of the Neanderthal man established by Ok¬
ladnikov, and recall the burial of a palaeoanthrope at
La Moustier, which it is also difficult to interpret as
a result of chance, unpremeditated actions, the con¬
ception of denying the reality of Neanderthal burials 15

134

converted into denial of convincing facts. And the
burial rites of Upper Palaeolithic man are so compli¬
cated that their elaboration must have required a long
time (as I have pointed out). There is another point
of view, of course, that Neanderthal burials should be
given only a hygienic significance (Zamyatnin,
1961). But from that angle, too, burials inside caves
testify to an awareness of sorts of affinity to the
dead individual, which did not exist in the preced¬
ing age.

Right from its appearance Upper Palaeolithic art
faces us with a phenomenon of great intricacy, di¬
verse in its form, and highly developed as regards both
sense and technique. One can say that from prac¬
tically the dawn of the Upper Palaeolithic. Polychrome
drawings on cave walls were then still rare, but the
drawings on bone and the sculptures are magnifi¬
cent in their expressiveness, and demonstrate any
amount of power of observation and a high level of
technical skill in rendering the depicted object. Let
me note the main point that interests me here, name¬
ly that such a developed art was the fruit of pro¬
tracted development over thousands of years. We have
no information about the existence of cults of any
kind, religious ideas, acts of magic, first rudiments of
art, etc., for the earliest stages of anthropogenesis.
The separate speculative attempts to adduce reasons of
sorts for their existence among Pithecanthropes, and
even Australopithecines, are factually unproved and
do not find support in today’s science. The first con¬
crete data refer to the Neanderthal stage only. The sepa¬
rate finds of signs of a kind on stones, which can be
interpreted, with some grounds, as a repeated orna¬
ment, may be taken as the beginning of concrete evi¬
dence of the birth of aesthetic ideas. It was possi¬
bly at that stage of anthropogenesis that there first
appeared time, free from economic concerns, which
must have encouraged aesthetic comprehension of
reality.

Finally, the preservation of the heads of animals in
a certain way that excludes the possibility of seeing
R only as a stock of meat (not to mention that not

135

only Neanderthal man, but also man of an earlier time,
could hardly have been unaware of the difference
in food value of head and carcase) can be interpreted
quite definitely as an argument for the origin of ru¬
diments of animistic notions, if not of fully animistic
beliefs. It is very probable that it was also related to
the first moulding of aesthetic ideas. The notion de¬
veloped in the archaeological literature of a stage char¬
acter of the images of primitive art (Stolyar, 1978),
supported by interesting observations that indicate
that the embodiment of the image of an animal went
through several stages—parts of the body instead of
the whole (the Drachenloch and Pitershohle caves);
primitive clay sculptures; and, finally, complete em¬
bodiment of the image in bone and stone—can also be
used to demonstrate the deep antiquity of the sources
of art, of which almost nothing has been preserved.
From my point of view, too, the extraordinarily prom¬
ising observations of E. Y. Fradkin (1969) on the
diversity of Upper Palaeolithic sculpture are extreme¬
ly interesting—further proof of the vast road that
Upper Palaeolithic art must have followed before the
age when it burgeoned. We find that age embodied in
material relics.

The dwellings in open Upper Palaeolithic camps
with separate hearths, interpreted in the light of eth¬
nographic facts, have always been considered evi-J
dence of significant progress of social relations in
those times compared with the Mousterian epoch,
and of the rise of the gentile system. At present, as I
have already said, the finding of analogous shelters
in open Mousterian campsites is undisputed and there
are therefore obviously grounds as well for applying
all arguments about the formation of gentile relations
in the womb of Upper Palaeolithic society (based on
interpretation of the dwellings) to the Mousterian
epoch.

Mousterian sites have been exceptionally thorough-!
ly investigated. In place of ideas of that epoch as a
period of slow, uniform development throughout the <
ecumene, and of the rise of two new forms of tool
instead of one (the hand axe characteristic of the pre-

ceding periods), a conception of an immense local va¬
riety of the Mousterian culture has been built up, of a
plurality of traditions in the technique of working
stone, and of a direct succession of separate local
variants of the Mousterian and Upper Palaeolithic
cultures. As I have mentioned above, a relatively in¬
dependent sphere of everyday life arose within the life
cycle of Neanderthals within which the first rudi¬
ments of aesthetic, religious, and ideological notions
began to take shape, i.e. of the magnificent flower
that bloomed in the Upper Palaeolithic epoch.
Those circumstances do not allow one to regard the
Mousterian epoch in the history of primitive society
as a stage of low development of the productive
forces and social relations, and to distinguish it unre¬
servedly as a special, great period of the Lower Palaeo¬
lithic. It was significantly superior to the preceding
epochs both in level of development of the produc¬
tive forces and in forms of social organisation, which
fully accords with the much more advanced physical
development of palaeoanthropes than of archan-
thropes.

On the other hand, a direct link of the Mousterian
with the Upper Palaeolithic is illustrated by the
discovery of the coexistence of man of the modem
type with a Mousterian culture. Since the cases of
discovery of such coexistence have not stood the test
of time, they would rightly seem to be unconvincing.
But there is not the least doubt about the persuasive¬
ness of the finds made by my colleague A. A. For-
mozov in 1953 in a Crimean cave at Staroselye
(Formozov, 1954). Doubts are excluded by the dis¬
tinct conditions of the occurrence, by the abundance
of Mousterian tools found around and above the buri¬
al, by the complete absence of traces of an admix¬
ture of tools of an Upper Palaeolithic type in the
flint collection from Staroselye, and finally by the
modem morphological look of the infant from the
cave (in spite of the existence of separate primitive
traits).

That find suggests a conclusion that the transi¬
tion from the palaeoanthropes to man of the mod-

137

ern type was a very complicated process, and that
the main set of modem features had already been
formed in Mousterian times, or rather within sepa¬
rate groups that still maintained traditions of the
Mousterian culture.

All these facts, some new, some old, which have a
full ring in the light of new observations, lead to
the thought that we must seemingly return to the pre¬
viously widely held division of the Palaeolithic into
three periods—Early or Lower, Middle, and Late or
Upper—later discarded, distinguishing the Mouste¬
rian epoch as Middle Palaeolithic. From what I
have said above, it can be held that it is closer to the
Upper Palaeolithic than the Lower.

Let me sum up briefly what I have said. The division
of the subfamily Homininae into two genera, with the
inclusion of palaeoanthropes as well as modern man
in the genus Homo, would seem at first glance to con¬
tradict the criterion of tool use. The line between
the Lower and Upper Palaeolithic is usually drawn
relying on the appearance of several new elements,
viz,, the fashioning of tools to make tools, the begin- (
nings of art, the development of a cult of the dead,
etc. But the sources of many of these phenomena
themselves can seemingly be related to the Mouste¬
rian epoch (complicated tools, elements of burial
rites). The diversity of the forms of tools in the
Mousterian epoch, and the existence of numerous
varieties of Mousterian culture (mainly discovered in
recent years) indicate a considerable complicating of
the historical process long before the onset of the
Upper Palaeolithic. From that angle the lack of coin¬
cidence between the morphological facts and the
boundaries of the genera within the Homininae
subfamily based on them, and the criterion of tool
use and the stages of development of social organisa¬
tion, is but seeming. What does that suggest? Undoubt¬
edly that prior to the appearance of man of the mo«
ern type humankind’s material and spiritual culture
developed in close connection with the evolution of
his physical traits. Such is the dialectic of the first
stages of primaeval history; the emerging social ele-

138

I

ment could not tear itself free from the biological,
which clung tenaciously to it.

The Time of the Rise and Character of
Local Differences in Culture

I have already repeatedly used the terms ‘culture’,
‘material culture’, and ‘spiritual culture’. A detailed
examination of the phenomena of culture and its
role in the life of humanity could fill more than one
volume. I shall not go into it, so as to avoid being di¬
verted from my main theme. About this aspect of the
matter I shall only say that by culture I understand
here all the results of human activity, irrespective of
whether they are found embodied in relics of material
culture or in the spiritual sphere. From that point of
view the first steps in tool use or labour had already
given rise to culture, and the tool itself, even the most
primitive, is an object of culture. The rise of culture
is thus inseparable from the origin of hominids and
the very beginning of labour. From that angle one
of the two opposing views on the genesis of the so¬
cial, namely that the social arose as a whole, and that
labour, society, and culture were simultaneous and in-
terconditioned in their origin, seems at first glance
more justified, than the either view, namely that the
social arose gradually and that chronologically dif¬
ferent layers can be distinguished in it.

This means that parallel with the local morpho¬
logical differentiation of the human race there must
necessarily have been a local cultural differentiation,
both because of the effect of isolation during its
spread over the earth’s surface and the increase in the
ecumene, and as a result of cultural adaptation to va¬
ried natural conditions. All that is theoretically jus¬
tified, and the fact of the local cultural differentia¬
tion of mankind itself is obvious. From the earliest
e pochs of history this differentiation is demonstrat-
e d by all the experience accumulated by study of
history, and by our now very extensive and rich
knowledge of the most varied civilisations and of pri-

139

mitive cultures in out-of-the-way corners of the
earth.

A problem arises when we ask when local differ¬
ences originated in culture, and whether they arose
together with culture itself or whether territorial
differentiation began in later epochs when the num¬
bers of humankind had risen compared with the orig¬
inal period, and its area of distribution had increased.
Theoretically, the alternative between the idea
that origin of culture itself and the forming of local
varieties within it were synchronous, on the one
hand, and the opposite idea of a comparatively later
forming of local differences within a single stream
of culture that had already been developing for some
time, on the other hand, cannot be satisfactorily
resolved because the logical arguments possible for
each are roughly equivalent. Even the original ecu-
mene covered quite a big area; the geographical con¬
ditions within it were heterogeneous and would
have encouraged development of local cultural dif¬
ferentiation, but culture must have been very uniform
and primitive in the first stages of its development,
which would have narrowed the possibilities for
territorial differences and boundaries of adaptation
to a variety of natural environment to develop.
The problem can therefore only be resolved by
empirical study of the earliest archaeological ma¬
terial illustrating the early stages of the develop¬
ment of material culture, i.e. of the bone and stone
implements of Palaeolithic times.

When Palaeolithic relics were first being studied
in the latter half of the last century, when they were
discovered and intensively investigated in Europe,
and their truly Palaeolithic, very ancient age was real¬
ised, attention was mainly concentrated on clari¬
fying their dynamic in time and establishing a chro¬
nological periodisation. Local differences were on¬
ly recorded haphazardly, and no importance was
attached to them. Students of the Palaeolithic only
came to an interpretation of certain observed differ¬
ences as local and not chronological, after a chrono¬
logical periodisation had been worked out and the

140

main stages in the development of the Palaeolithic
distinguished, i.e. in the first quarter of the twen¬
tieth century. The contribution of the Abbe Breuil,
the eminent investigator of the European Palaeoli¬
thic, was particularly great in that respect; he had
discovered and excavated an immense number of
Mousterian and Upper Palaeolithic sites and caves,
and distinguished several local varieties of Palaeo¬
lithic industry. But for decades the sole tool for the
Lower Palaeolithic was taken to be the hand axe, as
I have already said. Only after study of the Palaeo¬
lithic outside Europe, and the discovery of choppers
and other forms of tool, could it really be asked
whether there were local differences in the tech¬
nique of working, as an important production cul¬
tural feature, in the Lower Palaeolithic as well.

The problem of the geographical distribution of
hand axes and choppers in the different territorial
groups of Lower Palaeolithic relics aroused consider¬
able interest in connection with the question under
discussion. The American archaeologist Hallam Mo-
vius (1944) suggested a theory of a dual division of
the primordial ecumene, i.e. the Old World, along a
line running from north to south: in the west, he con¬
sidered, there were hand axes, while in the east chop¬
pers predominated. The spatial borderline between
these two immense areas of distribution was drawn
approximately along the geographical boundary be¬
tween Europe and Asia and across Northern India and
South-East Asia. This boundary, or the Movius Line,
can be taken as the first really serious indication in
history of the existence of a historical uniqueness
and local confinement of the historical process.
But the question of its reality has been the sub¬
ject of a sharp, protracted discussion. It was pointed
out that choppers and hand axes coexisted in equal
numbers in separate sites or were met in near geo¬
graphical sites (Zamyatnin, 1951; Boriskovsky,
1979), that hand axes predominated, say, in Java
(Boriskovsky, 1971; Bartstra, 1978), that sites had
been discovered in the west of the ecumene with
tough chopping tools (Bordes, 1968; Grigoriev,

141

1977), and finally that special features of sorts are
found in Africa (Grigoriev, 1977). In the last case
this feature is expressed in the uniqueness of the tran¬
sition, proven by the whole aggregate of investigat¬
ed sites, to the late stage of the Palaeolithic in Africa,
and also by the vast wealth of local varieties,
which reflect long survival of traditional forms. The
chronological position of the African Mousterian, too,
is peculiar; until quite recently it was dated at 50 000
y.a. at a maximum, but has now been backdated by
radiocarbon dating by roughly 75 000 y.a. All these
considerations, however, are only decisive if the
Movius Line is taken as absolute. Meanwhile it
should obviously be treated only as a very approxi¬
mate line (in the geographical sense) of the demarca¬
tion of various local trends in the technical working
of stone.

Both forms of tool were made, of course, and
both used in the west and the east of the ecumene,
but while hand axes predominated in the west, chop¬
pers did in the east. Because it is very difficult to
demarcate between the Chellean and subsequent
Acheulian stages of Lower Palaeolithic industry
both as regards geology and technology (which
gives rise to numerous disputes in many concrete
cases), I must limit myself to making the point
that there was obviously a constant perfecting of the
fashioning of both hand axes and choppers through¬
out the whole stage of archanthropes, but that the
boundaries of their predominance remained more or
less stable geographically. Apart from these, so to
speak, general, geographically restricted differences, an
exceptionally dispersed character can also be noted in
the geographical distribution of the different varie¬
ties of Lower Palaeolithic industry when it is studied
within comparatively small areas; an example is the
Caucasus, where groups of Acheulian sites are known
that yield technically different stone implements. I

Passing to the Neanderthal stage we get the same
dispersed character of the geographical distribution of
the different varieties of Mousterian industry, which
fall into rather bigger territorial groups; I have already

142

mentioned the peculiar character of the African
Mousterian; in Eurasia the special character of the se¬
parate large groups is less obvious, but there were
apparently such. The dispersed distribution brought
out for limited areas as well (for example, the Cri¬
mea) means that the local varieties of the technique
or working stone each represent the achievement of
a more or less small number of groups. A map of the
distribution of Mousterian sites throughout the ecu-
mene has not yet been compiled but, where it can be
assessed from enough reliable data, not only are local
groupings of sites noted but their territorial continui¬
ty with Upper Palaeolithic cultures is also traceable.
In general one can conclude, by evaluating local cul¬
tural differentiation at the stage of palaeoanthropes,
that this differentiation was greater than in the pre¬
ceding stage and expressed a progressive compli¬
cating of the historical process.

All these observations about non-contemporary
and territorially different sites, testify to one thing,
viz., that a territorial differentiation attended the
birth of culture right from its earliest stages. There
is no direct evidence of this differentiation for the
Olduvan epoch because of the limited number of in¬
vestigated sites and the uniformity of the traces of
material culture at that stage, but there is every
ground for relating the beginning of the manifesta¬
tion of territorial differentiation to the earliest pe¬
riod of the Lower Palaeolithic, the Chellean epoch,
i.e. at least several hundred thousand years ago. From
then on not only the chronology and sequence of
events but also the territorial peculiarities of pheno¬
mena must constantly engage our attention. The na¬
ture of the territorial differences is a very compli¬
cated matter, and I shall touch on it subsequently as
as is necessary in connection with interpretation
°f territorial differences in language and culture in
later stages of the history of mankind; here I will
s ay only that various workers ascribe quite a dif¬
ferent meaning to them and consider them as differ¬
entiated production skills that took shape first in
ethnocultural regions and zones and only later ac-

cumulated in so-called cultures—the archaeological
expression of the ethnic peculiarity of local variants
of culture as a whole, as an archaeological culture
proper in the narrow sense of the term, and finally
even as different trends in the style of shaping of Pa¬
laeolithic tools. When establishing the real existence
of local differences in culture from Lower Palaeo¬
lithic times, we are consequently still far from a full,
generally accepted understanding of the concrete
sense of such a local feature.

The Labour Theory of Anthropogenesis.

The Change in Physical Type of Ancient Hominids

I shall now return to certain problems touched on
above. In the major works published after the appear¬
ance of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the prob¬
lem of the factors in the separation of man from the
animal kingdom was not even specially treated, since!
it seemed obvious to their authors that this factor
could only be natural selection. But Darwin later
went much deeply into the matter and put forward a
hypothesis that was fated to remain long in the
history of anthropogenesis as the first attempt to
explain the diverse differences between man and
animals. This was the hypothesis of sexual selec¬
tion, i.e. selective sexual intercourse programmed
by psychological preferences, and consciously or
unconsciously based on physical traits of some sort.
Darwin argued his hypothesis of a sexual form of na¬
tural selection very circumstantially, using the already
vast mass of material then available on the sexual pre¬
ferences of animals and birds and also transferring his
own observations to man. In spite of the circumstan¬
tial zoological argument, however, which indisput¬
ably demonstrated the commonness of a sexual form
of selection in the animal kingdom (later many timel
confirmed), the possibility of transferring it to man
remained undemonstrated and became less and less
probable as palaeoanthropological knowledge and
awareness of the fullness of the differences between

144

anthropoids and man accumulated. In fact, what
sexual preference can one speak of in the course of
anthropogenesis in relation to such attributes as per¬
fection of the hand or large volume of the brain, etc.?
These attributes could not be fixed visually and con¬
sequently could not serve as the basis of sexual pre¬
ference; yet, as we know, it was they that survived
the stormy evolutionary development in the course of
anthropogenesis.

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century and
first of the twentieth, there was no lack of hypotheses
that aimed to explain the morphological peculiari¬
ties of man and his ancestors and to bring out the
factors that led to their origin. Many scholars pointed
in particular to upright walking as the decisive cir¬
cumstance attending the transition from ape to man,
that had had a significant effect on the transforma¬
tion of the rest of human morphology, and formed
the impassable gulf between man and the animal
kingdom. Others considered that possession of a per¬
fected hand with opposition of the thumb opened
up vast prospects before man of altering his environ¬
ment. Finally, a third group attached main signific¬
ance to the increase in, and development of, the brain.
Apart from that, attempts were made to extend the
results of the comparative anatomy of animals to
the process of the origin of man. These hypotheses,
when absolutised, did not take all the facts gathered
by science fully into account, suffered from one¬
sidedness in elucidating the problem of anthropoge¬
nesis as a whole, and (the main point) were based
only on data of comparative morphology and did not
take man’s social nature into account.

When Frederick Engels, the founder of the labour
theory of the origin of mankind, was developing
philosophical problems of natural science and
a Pplying the principles of dialectics to the origin of
tttan, he went much further than Darwin and other
scientists in understanding of the driving forces of
the evolution of man. The key idea of his theory
Was recognition of labour as the main factor promot-
the differentiation of man from the animal king-

10-294

145

dom. He justly regarded labour, initially in the form
of very primitive collective actions, but later in that
of increasingly conscious and purposive ones, as the
most typical behavioural difference between man and
animals; at the same time the labour theory of an-
thropogenesis explained the moulding of such specific
human features as the shaping of a mobile hand, per¬
fected as regards its motoricity and able to oppose
the thumb, the existence of a special means of
communication in the form of articulated speech, and
the origin of thought itself.

I must touch on another matter, secondary in it¬
self but of very direct bearing on my argument. It has
been said many times that Engels’ conception had a
Lamarckian tendency and that he assumed and even
defended the idea of labour’s direct influence on
man’s physical organisation in the spirit of Lamarck’s
theory of the exercise and non-exercise of organs. -
The reproach is not justified.

Engels developed his conception of natural science*
and anthropogenesis at the boundary of the third!
and fourth quarters of the last century, when La- ■
marck’s ideas were still alive, in spite of the spread of
the theory of selection, and when even Darwin him- J
self wavered in his approach to concrete facts be- I
tween explanations by means of his own hypothesis
of selection and by the Lamarckian idea of the exer¬
cise and disuse of organs. His correspondence of his
last years reflects this wavering and is evidence that
he trod a long, quite agonising path from full de¬
nial of this and other Lamarckian principles to their
partial recognition. In those circumstances one can
suppose that Engels simply took cognizance of the
age in his formulations, reflecting the contempora¬
neous level of development of biological theory
in them. The text I am concerned with, namely the
paper from the unfinished Dialectics of Nature on
the origin of man, was not published by Engels him¬
self, and it is not ruled out that he would have re¬
vised it. The separate formulations in it must there¬
fore be regarded more as metaphorical expressions
than as a direct defence of the Lamarckian princi"

pie of the exercise and disuse of organs.

What forms does the labour theory of anthropo-
genesis acquire when we regard it in the light of mod¬
em evolutionary ideas and our knowledge of the la¬
bour activity of the earliest hominids? We must seem¬
ingly suppose that selection remained a powerful
transforming force with the transition to labour, as
is testified by the intensive morphological transform¬
ations during anthropogenesis, considered above,
especially in the early stage of the latter. Those trans¬
formations cannot be imagined or explained without
the immense transforming role of selection, perhaps
even more effective in connection with the use of
sticks and stones, than in communities of anthropoid
apes. But selection must have sharply changed direc¬
tion from the outset of the transition to labour;
in communities of apes, as in general in communi¬
ties of animals, selection operates primarily at the
level of the separate individual. It is primarily intra¬
group selection; at the same time intergroup selection
continues and intensifies selection at the intragroup
level, as it were, i.e. favours groups with a chance
preponderance of strong, vitally active individuals.

The beginning of labour, or even the transition
to collective labour, drew a boundary in that respect,
altering the direction of selection both within groups
and between them. It is not excluded that selection,
by virtue of physical dexterity, still retained its sig¬
nificance at the intergroup level, but particularly
aggressive individuals must then have repressed
their anti-social qualities under pressure of the group,
while even physically weak individuals endowed with
social instincts and a high development of associa¬
tive thinking could occupy a leading place in collec¬
tive hunting activities and in making the simplest tools.
It is thus very probable that such a feature of Nean¬
derthals as the massiveness of the skeleton owed its
origin to the special conditions of their life. The daily
ne ed to carry heavy game even a short distance
^sing on the one hand from mastery of means of
bunting gregarious ungulates and on the other from
die transition to a permanent settled way of life,

could not help intensify the effect of selection on
the physical strength of individuals, which found re¬
flection in the forming of a massive skeleton, evi¬
dence of the development of significant mass (weight).
But with that the social instincts of Neanderthals
also developed to a much higher level than with ar-
chanthropes in the preceding period. As for inter¬
group selection, the advantages of close-knit groups
possessing developed techniques of working wood,
bone, and stone, and made up of more expert hunters
and food-gatherers, are obvious.

The significance of labour in the moulding of man
and human society naturally cannot be reduced sim¬
ply to a reorientation of the effect of natural selec¬
tion. Labour had an influence on the morphological
organisation of man’s ancestors through selection, but
in addition there remained a broad sphere of its di¬
rect action on the moulding of the social organisa¬
tion and psychic world of the early hominids. I said
above that it was impossible to achieve mutual under¬
standing in the performance of group activities
without the uniting of groups and establishing of
some level of mutual communication within them. A
sufficiently peaceful life was also impossible within
the group without that since, with the complicating
of individual behaviour the probability of clashes was
naturally heightened. But a heightening of the level of
social life in groups, and a complicating of collec¬
tive behaviour were evoked in the first place by labour,
i.e. by the joint activity of the members of a given
group in obtaining means of subsistence. Labour was
a creative factor in human development not only as
regards the forming of social organisation but also as
regards human morphology as soon as the prerequi¬
sites for it arose, namely the transition from manipu¬
lating objects characteristic of apes to purposive use
of them, and strengthening of the interaction be¬
tween individuals in collective hunting and food¬
gathering. Engels put it as follows: ‘Labour created
man himself’ (Dialectics of Nature, Progress Publishers,
Moscow, 1974, p. 170).

A view has been expressed that understanding of

148

the role of labour through the change of direction it
caused in the operation of selection is a vulgarisation
of the labour theory of anthropogenesis. That view
can hardly be accepted since the real creative role of
labour is not confined to the circumstances mentioned
above (it is only a component of the labour theo¬
ry of anthropogenesis), but is expressed much more
broadly. At the same time something else is suggest¬
ed, viz., to stress the special role of selection in the
labour theory of anthropogenesis, recognising it as a
special form of selection, labour or biosocial selec¬
tion. That opinion, too, can hardly be accepted since
the direction of the operation of selection (as we
well know from the theory of evolution) in no way
determines its specific character, which is revealed in
the substance of its effect on intraspecific varia¬
bility. The attempt to see some hybrid socio-biolog-
ical or biosocial pattern in the phenomenon of selec¬
tion can also hardly be maintained theoretically.

Labour as a social phenomenon in the first place,
and secondly selection directed by labour as a biologi¬
cal phenomenon thus apparently determined the spe¬
cific nature of the earliest stage of anthropogenesis
through their interaction, and likewise the progressive
development of the initial animal form in the eco¬
logical conditions described, which led to the forming
within the primordial hordes of cells or nuclei of an¬
cient hominids, and to their further movement along
the road of complicating group behaviour, tool use,
and social organisation. It was the social factor, la¬
bour, that played the role of the leading force in an¬
thropogenesis, constantly broadening the sphere of
its operation and narrowing that of the pattern of
natural history, i.e. of natural selection.

4

THE ORIGIN AND INITIAL STAGE
OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE

The origin of language—
an extralinguistic problem?

The origin of a phenomenon should obviously be stud¬
ied by the same science that studies the phenome¬
non itself. The philosophy of dialectical materialism
specially stresses that any phenomenon should be re¬
garded in development and that it can only be really
understood when its place among other phenome¬
na can be established. Any science, humanitarian or
natural (I deliberately do not use the broadly accept¬
ed term ‘exact sciences’ for the latter because, as I
see it, it puts too much emphasis on their ‘exactness’
and underestimates the objectivity of humanitar¬
ian knowledge), all the same, investigates the range
of natural or socio-historical processes and pheno¬
mena that come within its province both statically
and dynamically, traces their sources, and tries to
discover the laws governing their dynamic. Such an
approach is discovered with acquaintance with any
science; theories and hypotheses of the origins of the
phenomena that a discipline studies occupy no small
place, by volume, in it. Their significance is great and
they largely determine its face and its right to be cal¬
led developed and progressive, or backward and on¬
ly on the threshold of real understanding of its subject
of inquiry. Life is changeable and mobile; as Herak-
leitos of Ephesus said: ‘Everything flows’. Scientific
knowledge is only capable of reflecting this eterns
movement insofar as it goes into the genesis of the
phenomena, and the nature and causes of the pro¬
cesses. The motion of matter and its various form!
and transitions from one form to another are at the

centre of a science; that is how dialectical material¬
ism puts it.

The subject of this chapter, language, is no excep¬
tion. Its specific character is immense. In its outward
manifestations it is the result of the work of our
speech organs; at the same time it serves all spheres of
social life. Without it the life of society would be im¬
possible, even in its simplest forms. The realisation of
speech is biological, but the function of language is
social. It therefore cannot be included within the range
of biological or social phenomena; only certain of
its facets belong to both categories; it remains a
special phenomenon that is studied from various
aspects and has given rise to various specific methods
for its study.

It is commonly held that linguistics is a humani¬
tarian science and a basic humanitarian discipline.
This view took shape historically. At the dawn of
knowledge Indian and Greek science used to proceed
from text to language; rules of normative grammar
were derived from texts that were more or less out¬
standing literary works. Linguistic facts entered con¬
sciousness together with philological ones, i.e. togeth¬
er with the study of texts. Grammar, as part of
philology, came into the treasury of humanitarian
knowledge and was one of its cornerstones. In fact,
linguistics remained a humanitarian science for two
and a half thousand years, adopting the methods of
study of language characteristic of humanitarian
science, and was closely interwoven at first with phi¬
lology, and later with other humanitarian disciplines
as well (history of literature, criticism of histor¬
ical sources, etc.). Little attention was paid to the
biological, purely material aspects of language and its
production by man’s speech apparatus. Yet without
speech organs that produce sounds there would not,
°f course, be any linguistic communication. However
complex the latter is, it comes down to the work
°f the speech apparatus and is perceived by sound
^alysers. Without a sufficiently developed brain (the
organ of thought), language communication would
n °t have developed. Attention has been paid to that

aspect of the matter only in recent decades. The data
of anthropology on the structure and chronological
dynamics of the brain of man’s ancestors flowed into
linguistics and began to be widely employed in it, j
and likewise data of neurophysiology on the various .]
functions of the brain. Within linguistics itself expe- i
rimental biophysical methods began, at the same time, |
to be employed to study precisely that aspect of ]
language that is biological, i.e. the work of the speech I
organs.

Is that not the introduction of methods foreign to I
linguistics itself from outside? It employs the results I
of their application, but do they themselves not re¬
main foreign to it? Do they not enter the realm of
linguistics only from time to time, as a foreign
body? For the sound itself is not studied in linguis¬
tics; it interests linguists only in connection with its
linguistic content and its place in language. But that
is just the point; physico-acoustic parameters are em¬
ployed all the same, among others, to characterise
it. The investigation of all linguistic processes is very
closely linked with study of thought, and it is impos¬
sible either to understand or to interpret them if
thinking is ignored. That implies that the bioacous¬
tics of language and palaeoneurology (as the branch
of anthropology concerned with the evolution of
the brain is now often called), and the anatomy of
the speech organs in some of its elements, are organi¬
cally part of linguistics, forming a special department
of it. Much attention is being paid to the bioacoustics
of speech. An army of linguists is specialising in pho¬
nology, the science of the sound aspect of language,
but few linguists are yet engaged in the psychophy¬
siology of speech, which remains the sphere of neuro¬
physiologists. But there is a development of lin-M
guistic work proper taking place before our eyes inM
this field. The enrichment of general linguistics with
anthropological and neurophysiological data, and the
forming of psycholinguistics are demonstrating a reor¬
ganisation of linguists’ thinking and showing that lin¬
guistics is gradually becoming what in fact it ought*
to be, namely not a purely humanitarian discipline

152

but a specific science uniting in part both humani¬
tarian methods and experimental methods of the na¬
tural sciences, and studying all aspects of language
fully and not just its social aspects.

How, in the light of all that, does it relate to the
genesis of language? Do we have some process here
that is chronologically so remote from modern
times that there is no possibility of judging it by
modern linguistic facts? The process has not been
reconstructed satisfactorily; is the maximum that one
can expect to obtain only indirect information about
it, drawing on the data of the many disciplines that
study the earliest stages of primaeval history like
anthropology, archaeology, and ethnography? Many
linguists think so; and it is on just such grounds that
a hypothesis has been formulated that the origin of
language is an extralinguistic problem, i.e. one lying
outside linguistic science proper, a quite complex
problem to be resolved by the efforts of various dis¬
ciplines, if it is resolvable at all in principle, and not
simply at today’s level of development of science.

The eminent French linguist Vendryes (1937)
wrote, for example, that when one said the problem
of the origin of language is unrelated to linguistics,
one always evoked surprise. But, he said, that is true.
Incomprehension of it misled the majority of those
writing about the origin of language for the past
hundred years. Their principal mistake was to
approach their task from the linguistic aspect, confus¬
ing the origin of language with the origin of separate
languages. Linguists, he continued, study both spo¬
ken and written languages. They study their history,
using the oldest documents extant in them. But how¬
ever far back the linguist penetrates be always has
to deal only with already highly developed languages
that have a great past behind them about which
we know nothing. The idea that the protolanguage
c an be reconstructed from a comparison of existing
languages is a chimera. The founders of comparative
grammar used to amuse themselves with this dream;
now it has long been abandoned. Vandryes, fur¬
thermore, wrote that, as regards the oldest of the

153

linguistic memorials known to us, or the languages
in which children learn to speak, the linguist is
always dealing with an organism long formed, creat¬
ed over the centuries by the labour of generations
upon generations. The problem of the origin of lan¬
guage lies beyond his competence, and in fact merges
with that of the origin of man and of human society.
Language arose as the human brain developed and hu¬
man society was created.

That kind of scepticism toward the resolving pow¬
er of strictly linguistic methods of reconstruction
came about partly through the loss of faith in lin¬
guistic palaeontology which went deep into recon¬
struction of the history and social institutions of
peoples, but at the same time relied on very debat¬
able and subsequently refuted etymologies. Without
going further into the idea that has imperceptibly
crept in with this hypothesis that some of the pro¬
cesses and phenomena are unknowable, I must note
that this hypothesis stems ideologically from the pu¬
rely philological approach to linguistics mentioned
above, as a humanitarian discipline that is confined
solely to the field of historical reconstructions based
on comparative investigations of modem languages.
It takes these languages in the broadest sense, i.e.
not only as modern languages proper but as all lan¬
guages recorded by written tradition, i.e. beginning
from the start of the third millennium B.C. The ex¬
tension of the chronological limits does not, however,
alter the heart of the matter much.

All the general arguments cited above can be
brought against that approach to the genesis of lan¬
guage, viz., the origin of any phenomenon must be
studied within the context of a discipline that studies
the phenomenon itself. Apart from those arguments,
which have a general scientific character and are there¬
fore binding on those who share them, the tenden¬
cy itself to develop work in the field of reconstruc¬
tion of ancient forms of speech and the genetic re¬
lations between related languages seems to me to be
most important as an argument. Such work was
carried on intensively at first only in the field of

154

Indo-European linguistics; the detailed coverage of
Indo-European languages and existence of written
memorials make it possible to approach reconstruc¬
tion of the ancient pattern of Indo-European speech
objectively, and to trace the outlines of the initial
set of dialects or languages from which those known
to us as Indo-European developed. That work still
continues, and it has produced quite definite results.
But over the past twenty or thirty years the front of
linguistic research has greatly broadened in differ¬
ent countries; almost all the world’s languages have
come within the purview of linguists to one degree of
detail or another, so that the limits of the chronolog¬
ical reconstruction of language phenomena have
been considerably extended.

The hypothesis of the nostratic family of languages
(which will be considered below) can be cited as a
very deep chronological section reconstructed by
comparative historical linguistics; here I will note on¬
ly that it is a matter, in the opinion of many linguists
and allied specialists, of the Upper Palaeolithic age.
As soon as linguistics, employing its own methods,
penetrates to such a remote epoch, it might be
thought that the drawing of all the world’s languages
without exception into comparative research (which
is already happening now and making compara¬
tive linguistics global) would make it possible to get
an insight in an even earlier epoch and to reconstruct
the initial stages of the rise and development of proto¬
languages. That is still a dream, but one based on the
real progress already made by linguistics and there¬
fore not groundless, but what I call a sober dream that
enables us to peer into the immediate future of lin¬
guistics. Objective light on the origin of language,
based on linguistic facts themselves, is, I am
confident, the morrow of the development of lin¬
guistics; I shall therefore defend the view here that
the origin of language is a linguistic problem into so¬
lution of which related disciplines must also be drawn.

The genesis of any phenomenon is a process of extra¬
ordinary complexity, influenced by many factors,
and all the more so a super-complicated phenomenon

155

like human speech. First of all I must examine what
set of phenomena is meant when the problem of the
origin of language is considered. Here the funda¬
mental contrast of language and speech was brought
to the fore, together with other linguistic antino¬
mies, and far-sightedly outlined and deeply investi¬
gated at the beginning of the century by the Swiss
theorist and linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1959). I
This contrast has become the cornerstone of modern I
linguistics. So far I have employed the two designa- J
tions as equals, but the antinomy between them in-1
tuitively sensed by linguists even before de Saussure, f
and which actually reflects important aspects of such
a manysided phenomenon as mankind’s audible com¬
municative activity, impels us to consider the spe¬
cific character of both concepts and to draw a line of I
demarcation between them. Despite the fact that the
opposition of language and speech is accepted by
practically all modem linguists and is fundamental
for theoretical linguistics, there is no full clarity in
the interpretation of the phenomena themselves.

While not pretending to a rigorous treatment of
the theme, but summing up what seems correct in
the statements of other authors, I would note a basic
moment that seems most fundamental, and in which I
the actual different nature of language and speech is
reflected. This element is the social character of lan¬
guage and the personal, individual character of
speech. Language is the means of communication of
society, speech is the language of the individual. This
opposition is not absolute; language as a whole is
formed in its dynamics, by the by, through the
personal efforts of separate individuals, yet however
strong the individual colouring of speech, it is shaped*
on the basis of general norms of language uncon- J
sciously assimilated in childhood as an elemental
social necessity. Still, in spite of the conventionality*
of the opposition of the social basis in language and I
the individual in speech, only this opposition seems
logical in the phenomenon of language, touching its
most essential, basic aspects.

The awareness of this opposition that one finds

156

in purely linguistic concepts and that does not call
for any extralinguistic approaches in order to be under¬
stood, is extremely important genetically since it
immediately develops the details of the problem of
the genesis of language and faces us with additional
questions, namely: Does speech arise together with
language or separately? How are the origin of speech
and of language related chronologically? How early
does individual language creation begin to influ¬
ence the social functions of language? And what is its
role in the dynamic of linguistic forms? How were
linguistic forms perceived by the individual in the
earliest stages of human society? and so on. Quite
obviously we have only indirect considerations for
answering these questions, but they stem, I repeat
(like the problem itself), from linguistic observations
and general linguistic theory; insofar as they are rein¬
forced by the data of allied sciences they are direct¬
ed all the same to solving linguistic problems; the
answer to the question formulated in the title of this
section is determined by that, in addition to every¬
thing I have said; the origin of language is not an
extralinguistic problem but a strictly linguistic one
linked in the closest way with the origin of man and
the shaping of society.

Sound Intercourse among Animals in General
and Apes in Particular

In any forest or wood in summer you enter a rich
world of strange sounds, for the most part very pleas¬
ing to the ear. Against a background of restful rustl¬
ing of leaves you will hear the singing of birds and
the humming and buzzing of insects. In forests with
unfrightened animals (in the taiga or tropical forests)
the cries and calls of mammals are no less quaint than
the birds’ singing. Even the watery element, it turns
out, is not silent. Investigation of echolocation in fish
and aquatic animals by means of bioacoustic instru¬
ments has discovered a vast world of sounds emitted
by them and accessible to the ear of man; you can

157

buy a record with a reproduction of these rather mys¬
terious sounds, unlike those of birds and land ani¬
mals, but also very varied. The phenomenon of voca¬
lisation, i.e. the reproduction of sounds, immedia¬
tely attracted attention, of course, as soon as the be¬
haviour of animals began to be studied; in recent
years technical apparatus has been used to study
them that makes it possible to express the data ob¬
tained in the comparable form of physico-acoustic
characteristics. Unfortunately the data available are
still inadequate. They do not cover many species; yet
what has been got makes it possible to understand
both the mechanisms of the origin of vocalisation and
its functional purpose.

Imagine a completely silent organic world and
live population of our planet that does not emit a
single sound. It sends a shiver up one’s spine just to
think of it, so inhospitable and terrible in its silence
and monotony does our Earth begin to seem. But
that is only a subjective phantasy largely due to the
fact that we grow up in, and our psyche is moulded
in a resounding world. The objective side of the
matter is different. How does the interaction and co¬
ordinated evolution of the various forms of animate
matter come about in this world? All non-sonorous
motor communication—postures, gestures, and move¬
ments, expressing fear, threat, and submission—is
really only effective in daylight.

There is another form of communication expressed
and effected by means of odours. Musk glands emit¬
ting sharp and strong-smelling odours, the marking
of hunting zones by means of excrement, and snif¬
fing are common communicative phenomena in the
world of animals; the varied range of odours emit¬
ted by plants also serves communicative purposes,
attracting needed insects. We know from the remini¬
scences of Vernadsky’s contemporaries that that re¬
markably penetrating and thoughtful investigator of
natural phenomena lying below the surface drafted a
special work on the geological significance of odours.
What it contained we do not know, since it was not
published, but it can be thought that it was concerned

with the significance of odours in the migration
of chemical microelements. That biochemical aspect
of the matter should not obscure the other functions
of odours as signals, of course. But odours do not
spread instantaneously. The information they con¬
tain is quite indeterminate, and animals’ reaction to
them when they are not near by but are some distance
away is often mistaken. Like postures, though oth¬
erwise, odours are also less effective as an appara¬
tus of signalling and, consequently, of communica¬
tion, and their significance is limited. A silent world
is therefore one with weak information links of ani¬
mate matter; it is impossible to imagine complex
biogeocoenotic relations in terrestrial nature, or uni¬
ty of the biosphere, or correlated evolution of the
latter within it.

That alone, without additional considerations of
any kind, suggests the outstanding role of the sounds
emitted by animals as signals, and their immense
role in communication both for the members of the
same species or population, and the members of differ¬
ent species and populations. The signal function of
vocalisation is convincingly demonstrated by its su¬
periority over signalling by postures and odours;
sounds are more differentiated than odours, and are
perceived instantaneously. Unlike motor signals,
sound signalling does not depend on vision. Finally,
sounds can express much more varied emotional
states of the animal and from that angle are there¬
fore incomparably richer as regards information
than other forms of signalling.

Thus, although human speech arose with man, the
sound signalling that preceded it was, so to say, the
nutrient on which it arose. Sound signalling is a
common phenomenon in the world of living nature.
In fact, it is found in the behavioural sphere in nearly
all stages of development of the animal kingdom, and
plays an immense role in that behaviour.

A consistent survey of the states of separate in¬
dividuals and groups in which sounds are generated
very often and are demonstratively significant in par¬
ticular as regards communication, helps us evaluate

the role of vocalisation in ensuring the communica¬
tive function of behaviour. Several schemes have
been proposed for classifying these states, from quite
general to quite detailed ones; though they are based
on various principles they can, on the whole, be re¬
duced to different components of animals’ life cy¬
cles, more or less differentiated by their phases. One
example of a schematic classification is the divi¬
sion of all sound signals emitted by animals into four I
categories reflecting: different types of behaviour; de¬
signation of objects; evaluation of objects and situa- I
tions; determination of the behaviour of a neighbour¬
ing or related individual (Sladen, 1969). The marked¬
ly generalised character of this classification could
in itself be its merit, and could testify to the possi¬
bility of employing it broadly and in a manysided
way, if it were not for its indeterminacy in singling
out the categories of signals and relating separate sig¬
nals to them which impels us to be very critical of it.
Things are no better as regards the other schemes;
for example, when signalling, situational, and emo- |
tional types of vocalisation are distinguished (Mal-
chevsky, 1976), can the first type be quite clearly
separated from the second (for signalling about a sit¬
uation is also signalling)? And can types be distin¬
guished according to various criteria (is the third
type, which reflects the state of an animal’s emotion¬
al sphere clearly distinguished from the first two as
regards its psychophysiological genesis)?

The more promising are schemes of types of vocal¬
isation that most closely correlate them with the di¬
vision of the life cycle, viz., sexual, feeding, orient¬
ing behaviour, etc. In the final analysis the number
of such forms of behaviour is limited, and they can
easily be distinguished by contrast with one another. I
They are all accompanied with vocalisation, and it
fixes, as it were, one form or another of behaviour,
and makes it meaningful for other individuals. A
sound, or some combination of sounds, accompanies
a certain behavioural act or set of successive acts.
With certain, definite behavioural acts it is not pos¬
sible perhaps to correlate only the type of vocali'

160

sation that Malchevsky distinguished as attendant. By
that he meant any sound of a pointless character ac¬
companying the life activity of an animal, its sound
background, so to say. He distinguished it in birds
but it is also characteristic of many other gregarious
animals. As for the sense of this sound background,
and its significance in the general system of audible
vocalisation, one can already say that further, more
detailed study of at first glance neutral sounds will
probably help us differentiate them and bring out
some sense components in them that go beyond simple
twittering or any other senseless vocalisation. It is
very possible that the functional purpose of the
sound background, from the behavioural angle, lies
in its signalling to each individual and to the commu¬
nity as a whole about the contentment of all
members of the community at a given moment, and
that is necessary both for the community and its
members for normal realisation of the life cycle,
necessary as a kind of guarantee of safety and as a
sign of tranquillity and the possibility of switching
watchful instincts off for a certain time.

But even if the function of audible sound is more
than the above purpose, it is difficult to agree with
the idea in the literature that it is linked with pur¬
posive vocalisation (Firsov, Plotnikov, 1981). The
fact cited below does not seem convincing. The point
is the description in Jane van Lawick-Goodall’s book
(1971) of a case of an individual chimpanzee’s use
of objects to strengthen its vocalisation (a she-ape
hammered on an abandoned petrol can she has picked
up), and her subsequent instant rise in the system
of hierarchical behavioural links between the in¬
dividuals of the community. This was a typical case
of artificial intensification of vocalisation connect¬
ed with aggressive behaviour, which is demonstrat¬
ed by the analogous case cited by Firsov and Plot¬
nikov, i.e. the same artificial intensification of voca¬
lisation by the leader of a troop of chimpanzees in
laboratory conditions by rhythmic banging on the
eage, boxes, and other objects (the fact of the choice
°f ojects that are specially noisy when struck is,

* 1-294

161

moreover, particularly important).

Reverting from the special case of vocalisation
(a non-directional and neutral sound background)
to purposive vocalisation, which is correlated with
components of the life cycle, nine behavioural cy¬
cles can be identified attended with vocalisation and
the appropriate sound signals: communion with the
mother, communion with the offspring, orientat¬
ing, contact, play, feeding, sexual, defensive, and ag¬
gressive. This scheme is closest of all to the classifi¬
cation proposed by Firsov (1960), but differs from it
in the character of its treatment of the general cate¬
gories distinguished, and in distinguishing additional
criteria (mother contacts with offspring and offspring
contacts with the mother) and the absence of a ca¬
tegory of contact of individuals with one another,
which (in my view) is covered on the whole by con¬
tact signals. These nine types of signal communi¬
cation expressed by sound, acoustically, entirely
embrace the whole communicative sphere in the be¬
haviour of animals and at the same time are subdi¬
vided in connection with their life cycles and psy-
chophysiological states; that ensures its wide appli¬
cability and working value, and the possibility of em¬
ploying it in the most varied research of both a zoo-
psychological and a linguistic trend (in the book of
Firsov and Plotnikov cited above even the term ‘zoo-
linguistics’ is used), but I do not share belief in the
strictly linguistic character (i.e. like human language)
of animals’ communication, which does not, of
course, exclude some of the laws of sound systems
manifested in them, brought out by semiotics (Hall,
1968; Stepanov, 1971; Melnikov, 1978). Signals re¬
flecting predominantly locomotor acts (flight, attack,
etc.), which Smith (1969) suggests distinguishing, are
individual and may be accommodated in the corres¬
ponding wider headings of my classification.

The classification suggested embraces only a gen¬
eral typology of vocalisation, of course, and does
not include several special cases. Echolocation, for
instance, noted in several animals, sometimes quite
highly developed neurophysiologically (e. g. bats and

162

dolphins), is a very distinctive apparatus of communi¬
cation requiring a special structure of the sound ana¬
lyser that sets particular limitations on the process
of sound contact. The fuss raised over the past twen¬
ty years around the exceptional mental capacities of
dolphins (Lilley, 1965) stimulated many inquiries
in various countries into their psychophysiology and
sound signalling, the general results of which have
been expressed in a much more sober appraisal of
the higher nervous activity of these interesting ani¬
mals (Wood, 1979) and at the same time have yielded
extensive information on the principles and charac¬
ter of bioecholocation. But, I repeat, this is a speci¬
fic mode of sound communication and does not fit
into the classification adopted, which reflects only
the main trends in the organisation of sound signals.
At the same time many members of the animal king¬
dom are distinguished by limited vocalisation; in
them it is represented only by some of the types of
sound signal listed. The monotony of tone, and small
vocal variety of signals among the ‘silent’, or par¬
tially ‘silent’, species is not only perceived subjecti¬
vely by ear but is also precisely registered by the
acoustic apparatus with which many bioacoustic in¬
quiries are made (about which we lack the space, un¬
fortunately, to go into). The general classification
considered above therefore leaves aside special cases
of vocalisation on the one hand, as lying outside the
main line of development of sound communication,
and as redundant on the other hand because many
species employ fewer than the full set of types of
signal. None of that should be forgotten in its prac¬
tical use and theoretical evaluation.

Now that the functional role of vocalisation in the
system of communication links among various forms
of animate matter has been considered, and the gen¬
eral types of sound communication discussed, it
is timely to ask what the latter is as a whole, i. e.,
in other words, what is the exchange of sound signals
at the group level, at the level of community. Is there
something in animals’ sound communication remote¬
ly similar to what is covered by the concept of lan-

ii*

163

guage in man? And what is the group nature of ani¬
mals’ vocalisation in contrast to the individual sound
signals emitted by separate individuals and addres¬
sed either to other individuals or to the community
as a whole? Pavlov, it would seem, gave the first im¬
pulse to posing this problem, noting in general form
the display of separate reflexes constituting social
behaviour in different species of animal. His formu-
lation was not very clear, and was not published in
his lifetime, and obviously needed further develop¬
ment, but the idea it contained is all the same
comprehensible: instinctive reflexes have still only
been roughly subdivided into sexual, feeding, and
self-protective, and a finer, correct division does not
exist. They should be divided into individual, species,
and social, and those groups subdivided into smaller
ones. The variety of these reflexes is great, and we
do not yet know many of them fully or have studied
them. It follows from this that Pavlov assumed it
possible for there to be general systems in the sphere
of behaviour and communication that would cover
even species differentiation and would embrace indi¬
viduals of many species and not just one. This idea,
expressed in such general form, might have escaped
attention, even if it had been published; for many
years, practically to the present time, sound commu¬
nication has been regarded, and is still often regard¬
ed, as an exchange of meaningful sound signals be¬
tween two individuals.

Vocalisation meanwhile became a very powerful
form of communication among animals in contrast
to other means of signalling because it was inherent
in almost all developed forms of animal, and permit¬
ted coding of exceptionally varied information with
a vast functional, multilevel character and, at the same
time, economy in the information’s reproduction
and perception. A hypothesis of supraorganism sys¬
tems has been put forward on those grounds, in
which its authors, Firsov and Plotnikov, who gave
their reasons for it in the book mentioned above,
assumed a supraindividual level of communication,
a ‘sound chorus’ so to say, which they justly consid-

164

ered an exceptionally fundamental characteristic
of the communicative sound and behavioural aspects
of the life of a community. Quite obviously the
‘sound chorus’ differs markedly from the sound
background both in its vocal expression and in its
essence, i.e. functionally and informatively. The
sound background does not, as we understand it, have
any specially fixed informative load; its sole purpose
presumably consists in a collective demonstration of
the comfort or discomfort of all the members of the
group. The ‘sound chorus’, on the contrary, corres¬
ponds to the concept ‘language’ in contrast to
‘speech’ in linguistics; it is a full accumulator of the
information circulating in a community. The term
‘supraorganism system’ itself does not seem to me to
be successful, because such an expression is etymolog¬
ically and traditionally linked in biology with any
group associations of organisms (populations, spe¬
cies, biogeocoenoses, etc.). But the point is not the
term; much more important is the phenomenon it
designates, really justly appreciated by its disco¬
verers as a very important component of the sound
communication of any species, in other words, of
sound communication in the animal kingdom as
a whole.

In human society language ensures expression and
transmission of all the information amassed by the
human race, i. e. language as a whole, and not the
speech of separate individuals, which is called upon to
fulfil that function without realisation of which any
social development would be impossible. The aggre¬
gate of sound acts in a community, ‘collective voca¬
lisation’ so to say, which Firsov and Plotnikov called
a supraorganism system (and which I have metapho¬
rically called the ‘sound chorus’), has the same func¬
tion but at a different level of development, limited
by the psychic possibilities of the relevant group of
animals.

In one of my previous works I discussed the con¬
cept ‘information field’ in reference to the affairs of
human collectives. Each of them has its character¬
istic thesaurus, i. e. stock of coded and transmitted

information, built up from the traditional experi¬
ence of many generations, a thesaurus of precisely
those who belong to the group; each successive genera¬
tion adds something new to it and at the same time
transforms some of it. The thesaurus is formed over
the course of mankind’s historical path and is still
being built up at the present time, forming what can
be called the ‘information field of all humanity’. The
guardian of this ‘information field’ is the ‘collective
brain’, another concept that I have discussed. When
I wrote just now of language as an instrument of the
expression of information accumulated by human¬
kind, I had in mind the information field. But any
community of animals also has some minimum in¬
formation at a qualitatively different level, and that
part of vocalisation spoken of above as a supraorga-
nism system, serves to circulate this information.

The concept of information is one of the most fun¬
damental concepts of modern science; because of its
generality the phenomenon itself does not belong just
to animate matter. The ‘information field’, which
expresses a local sort of information, also does not, it
must be thought, belong just to the world of social
phenomena but at least to biology. The ‘supraorga-
nism system’ consequently, preserves and expresses
the ‘population and species information field’, and
ensures its dynamic. But, because of the lack of suc¬
cess of the term ‘supraorganism system’ itself, men¬
tioned above, and its functional purpose, as I under¬
stand it, it is more expedient to call it a Vocal-
informative system’. It corresponds to the linguistic
concept ‘language’, while animals’ individual commu¬
nicative vocalisation can be likened to the concept
‘speech’. A vocal-informative system is thus an ac¬
tually existing phenomenon that plays an extremely
essential role in animals’ communication and con¬
tributes to the moulding of human language.

Furthermore, I must mention the hypothesis of
primary and secondary languages suggested by Suvo¬
rov and Firsov (1975) and developed in the cited
book of Firsov and Plotnikov. Subjectively the sti¬

mulus to formulate it was seemingly the fact that its

authors, having discovered and discussed such a com
plicated phenomenon in the vocalisation of animals
as a vocal-informative system, could not help going
further toward extending the content and functional
sphere of such a general concept as language. By pri¬
mary language they meant an innate reaction bearing
information somehow about an individual’s emotion¬
al state and behavioural orientations significant for
another individual, e. g. postures, gestures, and other
expressive movements and sounds. Secondary
language is language in the generally accepted sense.
The other arguments include the observations begun
by Darwin on the similarity of the external expression
of emotions in various species of animals and described
in his The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals , first published in 1873. But, while ob¬
servations of the similarity of the expression of emo¬
tions in man and apes, especially in chimpanzees, got
further confirmation and were enriched by new facts,
in which the work of Ladygina-Kots (1935) played a
great role, specific reactions were also discovered for
many other groups of animals.

Human language, more or less corresponding to
secondary language in the hypothesis being discussed,
is not simply a communicative instrument but also
one characterised by a very high degree of intricacy
and order, possessing great stability, and distinguished
by a very rich social polyfunctionality. Phonetic
structure, grammatical and syntactical categories, and
lexical infiniteness are none of them present in any
congenital system of communication, however in¬
tricate it seems at first glance and however it is or¬
ganised. Human language is a unique phenomenon
among all other systems of communication. It is dis¬
tinguished from them as a qualitatively special phe¬
nomenon, and so cannot be regarded as a secondary
language, a stage, however high, in some supra-lin-
guistic communicative system. If we consistently fol¬
low the authors of this hypothesis, incidentally, we
must recognise the existence of a secondary language
as well among anthropoid apes. If the primary lan¬
guage, hereditarily conditioned system of communi-

167

cation, belongs wholly to a pre-conceptual level, the
secondary begins with the pre-verbal, but all the same
concepts, and they are postulated to exist among
anthropoid apes. Human language and the commu¬
nicative vocalisation of apes are opposed to one anoth¬
er as two stages of development of secondary langua¬
ge, i. e. the fundamental qualitative difference bet¬
ween them is wiped out in general. In the light both
of our everyday experience and of everything said
above about the wealth and complexity of human
language as a communicative system this seems an
oversimplification and theoretically improbable. It is
therefore difficult to accept the hypothesis of a pri¬
mary language among animals; in regard to them we
must speak of a communicative motoricity and vocali¬
sation, opposing them in principle to human language.

Now that I have characterised the general features
of communicative vocalisation among animals, it is
legitimate to dwell on the distinguishing features of
vocalisation among the anthropoid apes that are mor¬
phologically closest to man. These are the chimpan¬
zee and the gorilla, but gorillas are quite ‘silent’
animals, and their vocalisation is relatively monoto¬
nous. Therefore, when we speak of vocalisation
among anthropoids, we usually have chimpanzees in
mind, all the more so because vocalisation among
them has been studied best of all both through ob¬
servation of the behaviour of the animal in natural
conditions and in captivity, and in laboratory expe¬
riments. Not only simple descriptions are employed
now when recording vocalisation but also oscillo¬
grams that make it possible to fix it quite precisely and
consequendy to get sufficient objectivity in the scien¬
tific description of the sounds emitted by anthropoid
apes. Such descriptions have been given in a number
of works devoted specially to simian vocalisation and
ones of a general character dealing with their be¬
haviour and ecology.

It»is accepted practice to divide all the soundsmade
by apes into two groups: (a) emotionally coloured
affective cries and (b) relatively calm sounds whose
reproduction by the apes’ vocal apparatus is not

168

attended with visible agitation. These emotionally
neutral sounds have been called life noises (Ladygi-
na-Kots, 1935) or organic noises (Tikh, 1970). I must
stress at once that the division by loudness and emo¬
tional tension is quite arbitrary, especially when it is
a matter of animals; both depend on the individual’s
position in the hierarchical scale, situation, state,
etc. It is very probable that life or organic noises
are also, or nearly also, informative like affective
sounds, but their informative character has not yet
been adequately discerned by the workers.

This subdivision would have no essential signifi¬
cance for my theme if it had not been extrapolated
to the problem of the origin of language and if a hy¬
pothesis of the origin of human language from pre¬
cisely life or organic noises had not been built on it
(Bunak, 1951, 1966). Its author, V. V. Bunak, consid¬
ered life noises to be more useful for establishing a
connection with some informative blocks because
they were not associated with the animal’s emo¬
tional state, and consequently were more labile and ex¬
pressive as an instrument of communication. But that
point of view remains alone in the flood of literature
dealing with the origin of language from both a zoo-
psychological and a linguistic angle. Leontiev (1963)
rightly pointed out that a large stock of fixed inform¬
ation is associated precisely with affective sounds
and that they could not help occupying a big place
in the communicative vocalisation of Australopithe-
cines in all their collective actions and in the initial
stage of the rise of language, and could not help, con¬
sequently, being the basis on which human language
arose. As a comment on that I would note that, in
view of the arbitrariness of the distinguishing of cat¬
egories of affective cries and life or organic noises,
and the probable informative character of the latter,
life or organic noises could also have constituted some
of the basis on which human language took shape; yet
all the same, affective sounds loaded with vitally
important information played the main role in it.

As I have already remarked, the chimpanzee is
the most vocalised species of anthropoid apes, and is

169

I

closest of all to man in morphology. Everyone who
sees chimpanzees gets a strange involuntary feeling;
when you watch them for long it seems that they are
about to speak and that the barrier of silence which
separates them from man will collapse. But our ideas
of their real vocalisation are still far from as full as
could be desired, in spite of all the research (Yer-
kes, Learned, 1925; Schwidetzky, 1932; Ladygina-
Kots, 1935; Lenneberg, 1967; Hopp ,1970; Lieberman,
1972; Pirsov and Plotnikov, 1981). The number of
signals emitted by them fluctuates in the various
estimates from 75 (Yerkes) to 25 or 30 (most of the
other workers). Whether they are independent phone¬
tic forms or combinations of independent sounds has
still to be investigated. Some authors unite these
sounds in several groups, basing themselves on sense
content rather than the phonetic picture, but the
groups do not coincide in the various classifications,
which further complicates the picture. One thing in
general is clear; in spite of the view expressed in many
general books about the wealth of chimpanzees’
vocalisation, concrete inquiries suggest the opposite.
The suggestion made by Firsov and Plotnikov in their
book, that chimpanzees’ communicative vocalisa¬
tion is not the basis for the moulding of man’s speech
activity but is a system that developed parallel to it
(their proposition also includes other anthropoids),
cannot be accepted as fully correct. At the same time
the facts about anthropoids, and chimpanzees in par¬
ticular, give grounds for suggesting that human speech,
even in its simplest and most primitive forms, and
human language, arose and developed as fundamentally
new phenomena, not reducible retrospectively to the
communicative vocalisation of animals, that of
anthropoids included, poor in sounds and meaning.

I

The Morphology and Reconstruction of the Intitial j
Stage of the Origin of Speech

The works already published give quite a full picture
of the comparative anatomy of both the brain and

170

the peripheral speech organs in their development
from proto-hominids to modern man. That saves my
having to go into the relevant details and allows me
to concentrate in the main on a functional interpre¬
tation of the morphological observations (where, of
course, the state of our knowledge makes it pos¬
sible), supplementing the published works only by
the latest findings in the morphological part. What is
the general line of approach to consistency when exam¬
ining and appraising the anatomical structures res¬
ponsible for the speech function, and at the same
time involved in the speech flow without which the
function lacks sense, i.e. not only in the reproduction
but also the perception of speech? The interaction
of the cerebral processes and the work of the periphe¬
ral speech centres, and of the auditory analyser, in
the speech flow is very intricate and almost instan¬
taneous, so that a separated consideration of their
functions leads to schematisation of the process.
But such a schematisation is inevitable in any in¬
quiry that aims at reconstructing the activity of any
functionally complicated system. In our case it is
a matter of the interaction of several such systems.
But assuming that physiological and biochemical
processes take place in the nerve cells of the brain
that are expressed at the macropsychological level
in the formation of concepts, the peripheral speech
organs are responsible for the sound expression of
these concepts, while the organs of hearing provide
perception of the vocalisation in the speech flow,
it is best to begin my further exposition with a sur¬
vey of the fundamental structures of the brain and
the changes in them in the course of anthropoge-
nesis.

I cited facts above about the volume of the brain in
different fossil forms, when considering their sys¬
tematic position. Brain volume is a very rough, but
at the same time essential, characteristic of the de¬
velopment of the brain in living creatures, one that
effectively indicates the reserve of brain matter and
the degree of nervous organisation conditioned by it
(naturally, when this reserve is considered in relation

171

to the mass of the organism concerned). That point
must be specially stressed. The brain of an elephant, I
naturally, is bigger than a man’s; I could cite many
other species of various size; the development of their
brains can only be judged by correlating their volume
with the mass of the body. But that is not necessary
for fossil hominids; they all had dimensions of one
order with slight variations, so that direct compa¬
rison of the brain volumes of members of the various
chronological and taxonomic groups of hominids
already reflects the evolutionary dynamic of the brain
about which I spoke in Chapter 3, and which was re¬
flected in an increase in its volume and a complica¬
tion of its structure. I have already said that Tobias
adduced figures for various genera and species of
Australopithecines that do not exceed 600 cubic
centimetres. The known average for Pithecanthropus ,
including not only P. soloensis and P. pekinensis but
also all the new forms, is 917.3 cubic centimetres
for males (14 specimens) and 916.3 cubic centi¬
metres for females (eight specimens). The closeness of
these figures to one another is not evidence in any
way of an absence of sexual dimorphism in Pithe¬
canthropus-, it was rather more strongly developed
even than among later hominids, as is suggested by
comparison of the data on the development of se¬
xual dimorphism among anthropoid apes and modern
men. This similarity is rather the result of much ar¬
bitrariness in classifying the different fossil finds in
one sex or the other, and of the chance character of
the variations, which are supported by a small
number of specimens.

But what interests me in these figures is not that,
but primarily their absolute values in the series of
data on the other forms of fossil hominids. If we take
the average value for Australopithecus condition¬
ally as 600 cubic centimetres (males) and 550 cubic
centimetres (females), we get a datum line from
which we can judge the increase in brain volume dur¬
ing the evolution of hominids. For Pithecanthropus I
we have an increase of 56 per cent on the initial value 1
of brain volume for male Australopithecines and 67 I

per cent for females. For the Neanderthal species this
increase is already 144 per cent for males and 131
per cent for females (the average values cited in Chap¬
ter 3 were, I recall, 1463.2 cubic centimetres and
1270.1 cubic centimetres respectively). In modem
man it is still greater—164 per cent for males and
168 per cent for females (the averages cited above
were 1581.1 and 1476.6 cubic centimetres). Varia¬
tions in the evolutionary increase of the brain in male
and female specimens mean no more than chance
fluctuations in the respective figures (which I have
already noted in relation to the average volume of
the brain in Pithecanthropus). But the simple cal¬
culations adduced clearly demonstrate two points: (a)
they quantitatively confirm the forming of the third
element of the hominid triad discussed above preci¬
sely at the Neanderthal stage, and the justice of dis¬
tinguishing the genus Homo by that attribute: and (b)
an increase in brain volume of 150 per cent during
the evolution of hominids. Such an increase is most
eloquent evidence of an exceptionally vigorous evo¬
lutionary development of this organ parallel to the
squall of information beginning to break on primi¬
tive man from all sides together with extension of the
sphere of labour, complication of social ties, and in¬
tensively progressing understanding of the environ¬
ment.

What relation does all that have to the origin of
language and the early stages of its history? Not only
are the brain structures but also the volume of the
brain itself, and the tremendously increased number
of neurons in the cortex, are an indicator of sorts
both of the level of ancient hominids’ psychic
development and of their linguistic communication.
The brain volume of Australopithecines did not dif¬
fer quantitatively from that of the large anthropoid
apes, but in Pithecanthropus , and later in Neander¬
thals, there was a qualitative growth in the mass of
the brain, in the former by 50 per cent and in the latter
by 150 per cent. From that one can conclude that
certain new phase formations in the structure of the
speech function and language element were associated

173

precisely with these two events, i. e. the forming of
the genus Pithecanthropus and of the species of
Neanderthals.

What is more of less objective in the reconstruc¬
tion of the evolutionary dynamic of the brain of
fossil men as it is made from the data on varia¬
tions of the surface of endocrania, i. e. casts of the
inner cavities of the brain case treated as casts of the
brain? Three moments can perhaps be noted with
some certainty. The first thing that strikes one is the
increase in the height of the brain, which is associat¬
ed with growth of the cerebral cortex in which the
higher functions of man’s psychic activity are con¬
centrated. Furthermore a growth of the frontal
region can be noted in connection with the increase
in the height of the frontal lobes, and a certain reduc¬
tion in the size of the parietal region, which must be
considered a reorientation of the brain’s functional

system during anthropogenesis, a certain narrowing
of the primitive motor sphere, i. e. the sphere of me¬
chanical movements, and an extension of the brain’s
associative functions. Finally a distinctly expressed
protuberance has been observed on the skulls of Ja¬
vanese and Chinese Pithecanthropes at the boundary
of the temporal, parietal, and occipital regions, which
is not seen on the endocrania of Australopithecines.
This protuberance, noted by various authors, has
been given a varied interpretation, from considering
it a functionally neutral formation (which is impro¬
bable theoretically), to its interpretation as the result
of growth of those regions of the cortex associated
with conscious maintenance of balance in intricate
motor acts associated with use of the hands in the
fashioning of tools and generally in work operations.
The latter explanation also does not seem quite ex¬
haustive, since with it one would expect to find a
similar protuberance in the same place in the skulls
of Australopithecines. Some authors directly com¬
pare the development of this morphological structure
with clinical observations that damage to this area
of the cortex causes disturbances of speech. It seems
to them that, in the light of clinical observations, one

can speak of rudiments of speech in Pithecanthropes
in connection with the growth of this sector of their
endocrania. Let me recall my suggestion that the two
stages of marked increase in brain volume were asso¬
ciated with certain fundamental events in the devel¬
opment of speech; the first stage coincided, conse¬
quently, with macrostructural changes in the endo¬
crania of fossil hominids that enable the supposition
to be maintained in general form.

Passing to the peripheral speech organs, i. e. the
tongue, soft palate, larynx, hyoid bone, and lower
jaw, we see an essential difference among them as
regards possibilities of appraising their evolution.
The hyoid bone has not been found preserved in
fossil hominids. Furthermore, we do not have any
palaeoanthropologic evidence of chronological changes
in the soft tissues that form the larynx, but there
are such data for understanding the evolution of the
lower jaw. In the first case we have only the initial
and last links of the evolutionary series—the facts of
comparative anatomy of the structure of the larynx
in anthropoids and modern man; in the second we
have material relating as well to the intermediate
stages. The conclusion most important for my theme
from comparison of the structure and position of the
larynx in anthropoid apes and modern man seems to
be the thickening and rounding of the vocal chords
and the prolapse of the larynx itself. The former
made it possible to pronounce quite loud sounds, the
latter led to the formation of a quite long, elastic
oral cavity, which made possible pronunciation of
finely differentiated sounds. It is still unclear, how¬
ever, at what stage of anthropogenesis these advan¬
tages came about; whether they happened together
or were formed at chronologically different stages.

For a discussion of the evolution of the lower jaw
we have a series of palaeoanthropologic finds of chro¬
nologically different times, many of which differ in
a significant way. There is no need to discuss their
Peculiarities here, so I shall limit myself to very gen¬
eral remarks. Over the whole history of the hominid
family there has been a diminution of the lower

175

jaw, which is especially marked in the transition from
Australopithecines to Pithecanthropes and from
Neanderthals to modem man. A light jaw facilitates
effective articulation to a much greater extent than
a massive one, of course, since the almost instanta¬
neous changes in its position when pronouncing ar¬
ticulated sounds call for much less mechanical work.
That is also helped by the reduction of the chewing
muscles, since a less powerful musculature is much
more capable of rapid variation of tonus, i.e. the ten¬
sion and relaxation so necessary for articulation. The
change in surface relief of the lower jaw, which tes¬
tifies indirectly to the strength of the chewing muscles,
also falls mainly into the two chronological boun¬
daries mentioned, i. e. the transition from Aust¬
ralopithecines to Pithecanthropes and that from
Neanderthal man to modern man. These two stages
also find real support in the evolution of the lower
jaw, as they did in the evolution of the brain, which
additionally stresses their special role in the develop¬
ment of the speech function. We must add that the
development of a fully formed chin (to explain which
many different hypotheses have been suggested, but
which in the general, quite justified view is of sub¬
stantial significance in the speech process) also falls
into the epoch of the moulding of modern man.

Study of the evolution of the auditory analyser
encounters the same difficulty as study of the tem¬
poral dynamic of the peripheral speech organs (the
lower jaw excepted), i. e. the absence of material
palaeoanthropologic evidence. The growth in the
boundary zone between the temporal, parietal, and
occipital regions of the cortex considered above is pos¬
sibly linked somehow, as well, with the differen¬
tiation of the hearing function that would inevitably
have accompanied speech formation. That is per¬
haps all that can yet be said about the develop¬
ment of the auditory analyser in connection with the
formation of language (it is clear only that it must
have come about parallel with perfection of the lan¬
guage function). Now I must pass to the general con¬
clusion that follows from this very brief, and neces-

176

i

p

&

r/IKil : - IBLa

The Skhul group:
1- Skhul V; 2-
Jebel Qafsek 6

African palaeo-
anthropes. Re¬
construction of a
skull from Saida-

Palaeoanthropes from the Shanidar cave (Iraq): 1-Shanidar I;
2—Shanidar 5

Location of the cradle of humankind according to various au¬
thors: 1—after H.Valgois (1946); 2-after I.G. Padoplichko (1958);
3- after M.F. Nesturkh (1964); 4- after V.P. Alexeev (1974)

Drawing of an animal
on bone from the Mous-
terian layer of a Pa¬
laeolithic site near Ter-

Geographical areas of the four groups of the Neanderthal spedes:
1—European Neanderthaloids; 2—African Neanderthaloids; 3—
Neanderthaloids of the Skhul group; 4—Neanderthaloids from
Asia Minor

Most important sites of fossil
hominids: 1—archanthropes;
2—palaeoanthropes (finds in
Europe

sarily very general, survey of the morphological facts
about the evolution of the brain and peripheral
speech centres.

Australopithecines, having acquired an upright
gait and so become sharply differentiated from the
animal kingdom, preserved animal attributes in the
arrangement of other morphological structures of the
head and body, and therefore did not differ in prin¬
ciple from the anthropoid apes either in volume of
the brain or structure of the lower jaw; that is why,
in fact, we used upright walking above as the deci¬
sive difference between all hominids and other ani¬
mals when distinguishing the family of Homininae.
A significant qualitative increment in the mass of the
brain, and diminution of the mass of the lower jaw
and its actuating musculature coincide with the
forming of the human hand and the vast complicat¬
ing of labour activity at the stage of evolution from
Australopithecines to Pithecanthropes. It must be
supposed that this gave a tremendous push to the form¬
ing of the speech function, although the data do not
in themselves give grounds for saying how these es¬
sential changes in speech formation were concretely
expressed. The next stage in growth of the mass of the
brain, which is qualitatively even more marked than
the first, is associated with the appearance of Neander¬
thal man. It looks as if it were not attended with oth¬
er very substantial morphological changes, and that
it possibly owed its origin to the exceptional exten¬
sion of information. With the transition from Nean-
derthaloids to modern man there was a further evo¬
lution of the lower jaw, which was accompanied with
preservation of the previous volume of the brain,
by further change in the configuration of the frontal
lobes, an increase in their height, and a concentration
of many associative functions of thinking in them;
all that must probably be interpreted as morpholog¬
ical evidence of full, or nearly full, forming of mod¬
ern forms of speech activity. Such are the main con¬
clusions from comparative morphological observa¬
tions of the evolution of the organs of speech that
disclose the time of their intensive change. These pe-

190

riods, as I have noted, are not a problem of analysis
of the palaeoanthropologic material but one of re¬
trospective extrapolation of the results of linguistic
analysis itself.

On the Boundaries of the Sphere of Use of
Gestures

In this section I could pass to this reconstructive ex¬
trapolation but there remains a problem that has had
a major place in all inquiries devoted to the initial
stages of the development of speech, that is in fact
inseparable from a problem of the origin of speech
and language that I have only mentioned but not yet
considered. This is the problem of gesture commu¬
nication, the fields of its use, and the possibilities of
considering it a special form of speech. This range of
matters is particularly well known in Soviet science
since the hypothesis put forward by N. Y. Marr, that
kinetic speech formed a special initial stage in the de¬
velopment of speech, universal for mankind, predom¬
inated for years among Soviet linguists, archaeolog¬
ists, anthropologists, and historians of primitive
society.

The hypothesis predominated in the scientific li¬
terature (only a few opposed it) and was propa¬
gandised in popular books. That was not just because
of the high scientific and administrative authority
of Marr, Member of the Academy of Sciences, and
director of the Academy of the History of Material
Culture (in which archaeological, ethnological, and
much linguistic and orientalist research was concen¬
trated), but also because of the very appeal of his
hypothesis, which largely predetermined its popular¬
ity and wide acceptance, and the belief in it in broad
circles of even soberly thinking scientific workers.
Marr was colourful, a connoisseur of many exotic
languages, the author of innumerable works on lan¬
guage, literature, folklore, ethnology, the history of
the peoples of Southern Europe, the Caucasus, and
Hither Asia, an outstanding specialist in the ethno-

191

genesis of Eurasia, the creator of beautiful, bold
hypotheses and even fascinating phantasies, who
knew how to argue, prove, and convince, and who
very much loved to win disputes. His thought always
drove keenly to the sources of phenomena; the hy¬
pothesis of kinetic speech was an expression of that
drive and one of the partied elements of his general
theory of the origin of speech.

Marr did not work out the details of this part of
his conception, and in general he left much only
roughly outlined; he did not attempt to reconstruct
the structure of the pre-aural kinetic communication
that he postulated but, as he always did, drew on the
most diverse indirect facts to demonstrate the fact it¬
self, relying on a global approach to any linguistic
and cultural phenomenon and drawing these facts
from his boundless erudition (the secret languages of
many primitive tribes, the speech of the deaf and
dumb, the gesticular signalling in many artificial lan¬
guages, and much else). There is no need to sort out
all these arguments; they have not stood the test of
time. And they could not, being based on essentially
secondary phenomena. All the modes of communica¬
tion listed have a narrow functional range and arose
secondarily as a by-way on the path of development
of modern linguistic norms. It is therefore not legi¬
timate to extrapolate them onto the initial linguis¬
tic state. Interestingly, the big collection devoted to
the forty-fifth anniversary of Marr’s scientific career
(1935), which contained papers developing the most
varied sides of his scientific legacy, did not contain
one work whose subject was concrete inquiry into
kinetic speech. For that matter there are only a few
items on kinetic speech of a very general and unspec¬
ific content among the numerous works of his many
disciples.

But the problem formulated in the opening lines of
this section remains. Each of us knows, from every¬
day contact with animals, that they communicate by
poses and gestures. This communication is being sub¬
jected to scientific study. Much is passed from
person to person as well by means of gestures and

192

mime, especially in the absence of a common language;
these extralinguistic means of intercourse in man
have also been studied and have proved to be most
varied. What was the role of all these phenomena in
the forming of speech and language and what con¬
text is it limited to? The whole varied body of in¬
formation known to us today about motor communi¬
cation takes us deep into the history of the animal
kingdom to the lowest rungs of the animal ladder.
The facts relating to it have not yet been fully and
exhaustively gathered; much remains without sound
scientific observation, let alone investigation, while
separate fundamental cases of motor communication
(it is better to understand by this the whole aggre¬
gate of animals’ expressive movements since it is
closer to reality than ‘gesticular’ when we are speak¬
ing of them) have been studied quite deeply and
give an idea both of the character of communica¬
tive motor activity and of the sense of the communi¬
cations transmitted by it.

The brilliant, widely known observations and ex¬
periments of Karl von Frisch (1955, 1980) on the be¬
haviour of bees when they are transmitting infor¬
mation have,a special place. His first book The Life of
Bees appeared in 1927, has gone through nine
editions and has been translated into nearly all Euro¬
pean languages; his second book Bees, Their Sight,
Smell, Taste and Language, which appeared in Eng¬
lish in 1950, was more specialised but was also trans¬
lated into many languages. Both books have long
been classics. Von Frisch, who was not so much an
experimentor as an exceptionally precise and close
observer, opened up a whole world hitherto unknown
to students of insects, which reflected the commu¬
nicative sphere of the life of bees. Their dance on re¬
turning to the hive signalling to the other bees the dis¬
tance and direction to the melliferous flowers, was
described in detail. The character of the dance, and
its pattern and pace, change according to the distance
to the feed. The exceptional importance of his ob¬
servations is that he described a real system of motor
communication in animals, very rich in poses

13 294

193

although it relates to such a poorly organised ner¬
vous system as that in insects. In many other, much
more developed animals there is not so perfected a
system of motor communication, but they all have
some expressive movements that carry information of
some sort. On the whole the information transmitted
by means of them is less significant than that trans¬
mitted by communicative vocalisation, though motor
communication takes first place in the transmission
of signals in some species, if not the sole place. To
sum up, one can say in general that motor commu¬
nication, like communicative vocalisation, perme¬
ates the history of the animal kingdom and cons¬
titutes an essential component of behavioural ac¬
tivity.

What is the relation of motor communication to
communicative vocalisation, and to human speech
and language? Does it form some sort of system,
say, like the vocal-informative? A final answer to that
calls for fuller knowledge of motor means of com¬
munication at all levels of development of the ani¬
mal kingdom than we now possess, but from the
theoretical standpoint a negative answer seems very
probable. In fact, what system can motor commu¬
nication form, if it is amorphous and indistinct, and
signals about everything in a very general way, does
not admit of any variations, because perception,
i. e. understanding, adequate to the motor signal
would be disrupted in that case? In my view Ben-
veniste’s analysis of von Frisch’s observations (1974)
is very important for discussion of this theme. He
needed it in the context of his exposition of the gen¬
eral theory of linguistics so as to draw a line be¬
tween animals’ communication and genuine human
language. Motor communication was only feasible
given visual perception; there is no real language with¬
out the voice. The motor signal excludes a non-ste-
reotyped reply, i. e. there is no dialogue. The per¬
ceived signal cannot be transmitted further by means
of actions reproducing the original communication.
The informative load of the motor signal is extreme¬
ly small in contrast to the practically unlimited possi-

194

Gty&i U ih

bilities of human language. The motor signal is
amorphous and transmits something in general; it
cannot be broken down. Such are the characteris¬
tic attributes listed by Benveniste that demonstrate
the narrowness of the information channel realised by
means of motor communication. He therefore called
it a ‘signal code’, stressing its fundamental quali¬
tative difference from human language. Its indistinct¬
ness and amorphousness, and certainly the reflex
automatism and low informativeness, enable us to
reject the idea of motor communication’s inclusion-
even partially, into a vocal-informative system, and
provide grounds, on the contrary, for treating it
as an attendant phenomenon created and preserved
by evolution for special purposes, predominant¬
ly in separate groups of the animal kingdom.

In observations of apes in the wild, including the
higher ones, no broad motor communication of in¬
dependent significance or even signalling has been
discovered among them, beyond the usual threat ges¬
tures, postures of submission, etc. The pioneer
attemps to teach macaque-rhesus monkeys (Ulanova,
1950) and chimpanzees (Polyak, 1953) to use various
positions of the palms and fingers as signs expressing
a demand for a certain kind of food, have been con¬
tinued in a number of present-day and much better
known experiments by the American workers A. and
B. Gardner, and D. and A. Permakov, and on the
whole one can say ended successfully. The apes readily
learned to use the language of kinetic signs proposed
to them by the experimentors correctly though the
training took quite a long time. But all these exper¬
iments, interesting and important in themselves for
evaluating the level of development of lower and
higher apes’ potentialities are remote from my theme,
since they demonstrate these capabilities in the
conditions of very artificial experiments far removed
from nature. Kinetic signalling is weakly expressed
among apes in natural conditions (as I have already
said) and is a phenomenon, like the similar signalling
among many other species, that accompanies a vo¬
cal-informative system.

13 •

195

Darwin adduced a convincing argument in his Ex¬
pression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, men¬
tioned above, for the similarity, and sometimes strik¬
ing, in the kinetic expression of emotional states in
many animals, including man. This similarity is es¬
pecially striking among men and chimpanzees, as was
demonstrated by Ladygina-Kots (1935) in a special
album containing a large series of photographs of
a baby and an infant chimpanzee in identical and
similar states of high spirits, crying, pensiveness, etc.
In addition, however, any gesticular and facial-expres¬
sion communication in human groups (including
those at the lowest levels of social development)
has a markedly expressed individual-group charac¬
ter, and owes its display to traditions existing in the
given social group, and apparently to many other fac¬
tors not yet clear. There are many examples of this
marked gesticular and postural communication in dif¬
ferent societies. No attempt to reduce the whole
variety of its forms to a few prototypes characteris¬
tic of tfte earliest and ancient hominids at certain stages
of their history seems promising. These forms have
a narrow, functional purpose, specific in each so¬
ciety. It is difficult to imagine their origin and de¬
velopment from one root; it is easy, on the contrary,
to employ them as special systems of communica¬
tion that arose in special circumstances and were
created by society for special occasions, systems sec¬
ondary in relation to the main one, language.

The origin of various forms of motor communi¬
cation (gesticular, postural, and facial expression)
in societies of modem man must thus present more
than one problem; it breaks down into separate prob¬
lems of the genesis of one form of such communica¬
tion or another, all of which are closely associated
with the concrete history of the society concerned.
As for motor signals in the life of man’s ancestors,
it could have happened, as in animals, and possibly,
even, in connection with the freeing of the arms,
had a certain supplementary development in special
situations. One can imagine, for example, that the track¬
ing of animals required a generally accepted set

of motor signals that made it possible to observe
caution and utter silence during the hunt; it should
not be forgotten that Australopithecines, like an¬
thropoid apes, could only have been diurnal animals
and therefore hunted in the daytime (favourable for
motor signalling). The situation as a whole resembled
that about which Revzin (1972) has written as pri¬
mary communicative opposites on a here-there prin¬
ciple which is well expressed, according to his, (in
my view) just proposal, by means of gestures. But
such special situations did not alter matters essential¬
ly; motor signals in man, as with animals, occupied
a position of attendant phenomena in relation to
emerging vocal speech and nascent language.

Ontogenesis and Problems of the Origin of
Language

The experience of everyday life convinces one that
language is not a sum total of acts predeterrrflned by
heredity; no child has ever been born anywhere that
possessed if not the whole wealth of language from
the day of its birth, at least some rudiments of speech
function. The main stages through which the indi¬
vidual passes in mastering the speech function and the
language possibilities of transmitting information
have now been quite fully established.

It begins very roughly at one year old, when an
infant begins to pronounce its first words, the next
two years are taken in learning to unite these words
in phrases and mastering the rules of the language,
i. e. the laws of sentence composition in the form in
which they are passed to the child by his environ¬
ment. By that time a child perceives, remembers, and
trusts fully the existing norms, and reproduces what
it has learned. The picture is different when it reaches
3 and more. It was not without reason that the Soviet
children’s writer Kornei Chukovsky called children
of three to five philologists of genius; having mas¬
tered the rudiments and ready-made rules of speech, a
child begins to experiment, impetuously making up

197

language constructions, usually with words, outra¬
geously distorting them and mixing them up, but al¬
ways relying on some rule, and employing ways of
word formation not used and barred in the language.
It creates new words and expressions, and does not
stop at creating senseless ones, yet ones associated
with the deep structures of the language. A child
takes on the role of a bold pioneer of new linguistic
paths and independent reformer of the language who
peeps into its most intimate corners and surprises
us adults by the discovery of unexpected consonances
and semantic comparisons that, for all their unex¬
pectedness for us, accustomed by life to linguistic
routine, are at the same time astonishingly logical and
justified, and fully correspond to unrealised linguis¬
tic norms. Chukovsky’s book on this theme (1928) is
a rich collection of children’s word creation, which
continues sometimes to six or seven years. After that,
having mastered the norm and experimented with
deviations from it, so to say, and also having mas¬
tered the expressiveness of language, a child begins to
speak as adults do, and its further linguistic develop¬
ment is already expressed only in quantitative growth,
i. e. in an extension of the conceptual sphere atten¬
dant on its extension of vocabulary, etc.; this quanti¬
tative growth continues all its life.

What I have said illustrates the obvious idea with
which I began this section, namely that man learns
language, that language is not an innate phenomenon,
that individual speech is also impossible without so¬
ciety and without teaching, and that the mastery of
speech and language rests on a long process of onto¬
genetic development of the individual’s psychophy-
siological features and interaction with the society
around him. The length of childhood in modem man
compared with other living creatures, about which
people are fond of writing as a necessary period of
assimilation of information needed for later life, and
which is, in fact, such, was seemingly originally and
primarily needed for learning to talk and to assimi¬
late the wealth of language, the former taking place
as unconscious assimilation of phonetic and gramma-

198

ticaJ speech norms, and not as a phenomenon fixed
in consciousness through living in a corresponding
speech element, and the latter with the involvement
of consciousness at a later age, in the second period
of childhood and in youth. All these propositions
not only follow from a theoretical examination of
the problem of speech formation and language crea¬
tion but also find confirmation in the experiements
Nature herself poses and the results of which strik¬
ingly demonstrate the role of society in forming
the individual’s speech function and its confinement
to certain cerebral structures that are formed and de¬
veloped in early childhood and later jell, as it were,
and cannot actively function. These natural exper¬
iments are the lost children that accidentally do
not die but are brought up by animals. Kipling’s
fascinating story about Mowgli gives an idea of what
we mean.

Have many cases of the raising of children by wild
animals been scientifically described? And what is the
documentation relating to them? Reliably recorded
cases are few and usually relate to children raised by
wolves (Singh, Zingg, 1942). The separate, reliably
described cases of children that have grown up in
complete solitariness, without speech contact with
other people, must be added to the cases of the rais¬
ing of children by wolves. They had more or less
normal locomotion but had difficulty in apprehend¬
ing others’ speech to the end of their lives, while
their own speech was indistinct and very primitive;
though returned to society and being constantly
with beings like themselves they did not really learn
to talk. But apart from the wolf-children’s retaining
a high capacity for quadrupedal locomotion, to which
they always reverted when they needed to move
quickly, and for a vocalisation closely resembling a
wolf’s they had in addition an exceptional acuteness
of hearing and smell. One point is particularly impor¬
tant for my theme; what is the boundary that arises
at an early age and insurmountably prevents full
assimilation of truly human speech and a truly hu¬
man set of sensory reactions? Society is necessary for

199

the normal moulding of the individual’s speech in on¬
togenesis; without society the periods of ontoge¬
nesis directed to perception of language and mas¬
tery of speech are irreversibly lost forever, and cannot
be fully restored for the individual by any subse¬
quent contacts. Without society, consequently,
there is no speech and no language; only society
moulds the truly social creature that a normal indi¬
vidual is.

In summing up this section I must stress that the
periodicity of ontogenesis is manifested not only in
morphological development but also in psychophy-
siological reactions, one form of which is the speech
function. The psychophysiological assimilation of
speech habits takes place roughly between three
and eight years of age; exclusion of a person from
society in those years completely blocks his chance
of becoming a 100 per cent human. The individual
cases of mastery of speech by persons deaf, blind,
and mute from birth, and their purposive, quite
successful training does not refute what has been said,
since these cases are only possible with active influ¬
ence of the external world, ie. society, though the blind
deaf-mute, especially in the first days of mastery of
speech, functions as a quite passive object in relation
to society, whose independence and subjectivity are
manifested at best in a desire to overcome the phys¬
ical handicap (and in this case, consequently, the
psychic defectiveness). Speech as the individual
speech function, and language as the means of inter¬
course of all people, are moulded in an indissolu¬
ble unity of the active interactions of society as a
whole and of all the individuals composing it, in the
concrete interactions of any independent group and
of its members.

The Main Stages in the Development of
Speech and Language

Everything I have said so far has of necessity curso¬
rily described the immense range and variety of the

200

problems that arise when one analyses the beginnings
of the speech function. I am convinced that it is pos¬
sible to distinguish a vocal-informative system in
the communication of animals that is a remote, quali¬
tatively different, primitive analogue of language and
at the same time a component prototype, from the
semiotic standpoint, of the powerfully developed sign
system that is language. Individual communicative
vocalisation forms the same remote, prototype ana¬
logue of speech. Neither speech nor language is a
feature of human behaviour predetermined by he¬
redity; they are the product of society’s training of
the individual, a product of the perception (at first
unconscious, then conscious) of already existing so¬
cial linguistic and speech norms during early ontoge¬
netic development. The dragging out of early onto¬
genetic development is not only a natural process of
a morphophysiological character but also a factor
ensuring the viability of speech and language in so¬
ciety through their transmission from generation to
generation. Each generation introduces changes into
them that are barely perceptible to itself, but which,
as they accumulate, are expressed in an evolution of
linguistic phenomena that many linguists call, not
without ground, internal linguistic changes in contrast
to the external ones caused by the effect of other
languages. Finally, the data of comparative morpho¬
logy give a picture, albeit approximate, of the chro¬
nological changes in the instruments of speech.

The problems, as we see, are many, intricate, and
varied, scrutinisable and resolvable not only from var¬
ious points of view but also from the material of
various scientific disciplines. How does linguistic ana¬
lysis itself respond to them? And what general prin¬
ciples can it suggest by which modern speech and mod¬
ern language could lead us back to their starting
point? The hypothesis of kinetic speech postulated by
Marr as the first stage in the development of speech,
mentioned above, did not exhaust his work on the
genesis of language. It was those works of his last
years, done when he himself was advanced in age and
burdened with administrative affairs, and in a hurry,

201

and when, not being exposed to criticism, he gave
free rein to his fancies, that blotted his reputation in
the eyes of succeeding generations of linguists, and
canonised his scientific portrait as a muddle-head and
dreamer. His conception looks both fantastic and
very schematic, of course, now that a system of
sound shifts in languages of various types has been
finely developed and the possibilities and boundaries
for retrospective reconstructions based on them are
clear (these possibilities do not, at best, go chrono¬
logically beyond the existence of man of the mod¬
ern type). Marr tried to reduce the whole sound di¬
versity of existing languages to four initial elements,
to four closed syllables that constituted the first sig¬
nificant words and that (he claimed ) came into all
the languages spoken by primitive man initially as
component elements, and are now represented too in
modern languages through them. He looked for these
initial elements in various combinations in Sume¬
rian and Chuvash, languages of the peoples of the
Caucasus and of American Indians, and relied some¬
times on most improbable comparisons and etymol¬
ogies. The breadth of his generalising thought made
his views popular in the eyes of contemporaries, and
only the research of later generations, as we have said,
justifiably rejected them.

How do matters stand in times closer to us, and
now; have the linguistic elaborations about the deep¬
est sources of oral speech and the first stages of its
development become more concrete? Parallel with
linguistic reconstruction we may also mention the
work of physiologists who have developed this theme,
in particular Pavlov’s pupils and the continuers of
his work. Orbeli (1949) consistently developed his
teacher’s conception of the second signalling system,
i.e. reflexes to the ‘signal of signals’, to use Pavlov’s
terminology, the word, and suggested differentiating,
in addition to the two stages, viz., the first signalling
system proper to animals, and the second, charac¬
teristic of man, a third intermediate stage, subsuming
by it the moulding of the structural components of
physiological reactions that come into the second

202

signalling system, and correlating it in the broad sense
of the term with the period of anthropogenesis.
L. A. Firsov and colleagues (Firsov, Znamenskaya,
Mordvinov, 1974), who put forward the hypothe¬
sis of primary and secondary languages that I criti¬
cised above, proposed a scheme of the development
of the conceptual apparatus corresponding to these
two language stages; the primary language corresponds
to preconceptual higher nervous activity (it is impos¬
sible even to say ‘thinking’ since, as generally believed,
thinking begins with the forming of concepts,
thought images of the external world); while the de¬
velopment of the secondary language is represented
by two stages (A, that of preverbal concepts; and B,
that of verbal concepts).

While Orbeli’s suggestion is self-evident logically in
its simplicity, the more detailed classification of Fir¬
sov et al. is the result of a high degree of generalisa¬
tion of various experimental data, generalisation at
the level when it already breaks away from the facts
underlying it and becomes an independent theoreti¬
cal construction that must also be discussed theo¬
retically. The preconceptual stage obviously has no
bearing on the origin of speech and consequently is of
no interest for my theme. As for the conceptual lev¬
el, with its stages of preverbal and verbal concepts,
the question arises in relation to it of whether prever¬
bal concepts exist and, if so, in what form they occur.
For a concept is not just an image of the external
world but is also an image that can be adequately
perceived by other individuals; without that it is im¬
possible in general to judge a concept—it is a “thing
in itself’. ‘Inner speech’ (Vygotsky, 1934), it seems,
can also not take place without external speech and
without formulation. 1 cannot, in this connection,
go into the subtleties of the discussions that have
repeatedly arisen around these problems, but, at any
rate, I must note the debatable character of the at¬
tempts to tackle them and, of course, the arguable
character of a chronological scheme of the periodi-
sation of man’s mastery of his inherent means of
communication based on the genesis of concepts. In

203

view of the above, it is no longer important that the
psychophysiological periodisations, for all their affin¬
ity to the problem I am considering in this section,
and their great importance in connection with it,
owing to their general character, do not carry any
concrete information about the phonetic peculiari¬
ties and linguistic structures in the early stage of the
moulding of speech and leave us where we were, at
the level of a reconstruction of the initial prerequi¬
sites, morphophysiological and psychophysiological,
of the speech function.

More specific reconstructions have been suggest¬
ed by my colleagues with a predominant reliance
on anthropological (Bunak, 1951, 1966) and linguis¬
tic (Leontiev, 1963) material. They contain con¬
crete attempts to present the development of the
phonetic, structural, and semantic aspects of speech
and language, albeit in general form, but here I must
note that neither the anthropologist nor the linguist
confined himsef just to his own data, or proceeded
solely from them, but drew widely on the facts of
related sciences—the linguist on anthropology and the
anthropologist on linguistics. In principle that can
only be welcomed, but I must recall that making
good of the inadequacy of the information of one’s
own field of research by means of the data of allied
disciplines is only effective when one is very rigorous¬
ly critical of them. The intricacy of the problem,
the inadequacy of the facts, and the polysemy re¬
tained in the interpretation of the observations al¬
ready at our disposal, led to both of these schemes
differing essentially from one another in their placing
of the time of the rise of speech and language on the
chronological scale of anthropogenesis; strictly speak¬
ing, Bunak’s schemes proposed in various years dif¬
fer from one another in separate details.

At first he distinguished six stages: prespeech,
protospeech, a stage of call-cries, a stage of separate
polysemantic word-sentences, a stage of more numer¬
ous, differentiated word-sentences, and a stage of
articulated utterances. He treated them as equivalent
and compared them with the stages of hominids’

204

morphological evolution and the development of
tool-use, i.e. gave them a strict chronological signif¬
icance. He also correlated them with chronological
stages in the development of thinking, which also
numbered six, namely a narrow set of notions, a
wider circle of notions, elementary concepts, con¬
cepts about the main forms of activity, more nume¬
rous and differentiated concepts, and interrelated
concepts. In his later work the number of stages in
the evolution of speech was increased to seven, and
they were given a rather different description. I do
not have in mind here the terminology: ‘sound sig¬
nals’ he renamed ‘vocal signals’; for ‘call-cries’ he in¬
troduced the term ‘lalling’, which means ‘babbling’
or ‘prattling’ (from Latin lallare —to sing lala or lul¬
laby). The substance is more important; he char¬
acterised the seven stages as follows: vocal signals;
lalling with a weak articulation; lalling with a dis¬
tinct articulation; single words; differentiated words;
phonetically varied words; speech syntagmata. He
also fixed seven stages of thinking in accordance
with that: narrow concrete notions; extended con¬
crete notions; general notions and connections within
several cycles of actions; rudimentary concepts; dif¬
fuse concepts; concepts worked out in detail; and
syntagmata.

Quite detailed explanations of the order of distri¬
bution of the increasingly complicated elements of
speech were given in the accompanying text accord¬
ing to the chronological stages of anthropogenesis,
but they cannot be considered exhaustive. The pro¬
posed classification is very detailed, and that, though
paradoxical at first glance, is its main drawback; there
are no grounds in the facts of comparative mor¬
phology that Bunak employed, or in the archaeo¬
logical materials of Palaeolithic times, or finally in
the special features of the culture of Palaeolithic men
for such a detailed reconstruction of the stages of
articulation and grammatical structure of language,
which are exclusively linguistic phenomena that
obviously can only be reconstructed, in the sequence
of their origin, on the basis of profound retrospec-

205

tive linguistic analysis (if they can be reconstruct¬
ed at all). But that, too, is not the sole point; the
conception itself is largely vague. What are rudimen¬
tary and diffuse concepts? And what is the difference
between them? The same needs to be asked about
the notions and connections within a single cycle of
actions, and within several cycles. These questions
relate to the succession of the stages of thinking, but
that can also be extended to the speech stages. The
hypothesis discussed has given rise to many doubts
and questions, while the excessive, detailed chronolog¬
ical elaboration and the vague description of the
chronological stages distinguished make it controver¬
sial at bottom and very, very vulnerable. The anthro¬
pologist comes forward in it as a linguist, but the
anthropology does not give him any such right.

The primary elements in Leontiev’s periodisation,
as noted above, are not, in contrast to Bunak’s, life or
organic noises, but the affective sounds connected in
apes with certain emotional states and conveying a
definite sense to other individuals. In the next stage,
which embraces Australopithecines and Pithecanthro¬
pes, there were no special new formations, and no
distinct forms of articulate speech took shape; speech
communication was effected by cries going back ge¬
netically to the affective sounds of primates. Real
speech began in rudimentary forms with Neandertha-
loids. From the principle of a shift of acts of arti¬
culation from the larynx to the mouth, Leontiev
drew a conclusion about the great articulating work
done by Neaderthaloids and about the rise of arti¬
culated speech precisely at that stage (which one can
call the third). He drew conclusions about the syllabic
speech of Neanderthaloids and about the role played
by clicking sounds from observations of the physio¬
logical mechanisms of speech. All these concrete
conclusions, coming from a very authoritative psy¬
cholinguist, merit very close attention. The last,
fourth, stage in his periodisation, finally, is the speech
of modem man, which arose in its main forms to¬
gether with man of the modem type.

What can we say about this conception? It is

206

attractive because of its much more generalised char¬
acter compared with Bunak’s scheme, does not fill
in the gaps in our knowledge about the concrete
forms of the speech function at the various stages of
anthropogenesis with theoretical postulates, and is
much more basically grounded in its individual de¬
tails. But it also evokes a puzzling question, and one
cannot find an answer to it in the conception; if, as
Leontiev affirms, there was no essential difference
between the ‘speech’ of Australopithecines (or any
other apes) and the speech of Pithecanthropes, how
can the marked increase in the volume of the brain
at just the transition from Australopithecines to
Pithecanthropes demonstrated above be explained?
If there was a steeply rising increase in the volume
of information, and of the memory required, the
increase in the volume of information would have
affected more than just morphological features (i.e.
the increase in the volume of the brain and the struc¬
ture somehow linked with it); it would also have
affected the speech function by which that informa¬
tion was circulated, and could not have helped doing
so. On that point Leontiev’s scheme does not seem
adequate to explain the anthropological observa¬
tions satisfactorily.

The reconstruction of the evolutionary dynamic of
speech and language in connection with the history
of the hominid family thus cannot now be discussed
in an unequivocal way, further inquiry and discussion
are called for. The aggregate of the facts adduced above
from the sphere of animals’ sound vocalisation (in¬
cluding that of apes), and from the comparative mor¬
phology of the brain and peripheral speech organs,
and finally certain observations by linguists that may
be confined in time to certain chronological boun¬
daries make it possible, when we compare them with
observations of the morphological structure of man’s
fossil ancestors, to express a few opinions that seem
more or less objective and indisputable since they are
based on facts obtained by various sciences and there¬
fore amenable to mutual checking. First of all, of
course, it is most important, though most diffi-

207

cult, to reconstruct the initial state of vocalisation
that provided the basis of human speech and that
also, strictly speaking, predetermined the answer to
the problem of the origin of speech. Australopithe-
cines, I recall, were creatures with an erect posture
and arms freed of the support function, which passed
to a constant use of tools and, within certain limits,
even to making them, and practiced permanent hunt¬
ing and consequently permanent consumption of
meat, without abandoning food-gathering. The intake
of protein must have livened up the working of the
nervous system; hunting for fast moving animals
called for the development of mutual understanding
between individuals; the change of locomotion caused
significant changes in the whole system of motor
reflexes. Australopithecines thus differed in many
fundamental respects from anthropoid apes, and
made a significant step forward on the road toward
approximating to man, but the growth in the volume
of their brains was small compared with the gorilla
and chimpanzee.

The explanation of that point seemingly lies in
the character of the changes we have just referred
to. It is possible that they were concentrated in the
morphophysiology and consequently took place in
that sphere which had progressively been develop¬
ing for many hundreds of millions of years without
a speech function; that relates to changes in locomo¬
tion and the manipulations of the freed hands. As
for the transition to hunting and the mutual co¬
ordination of collective actions needed for it, we also
know examples of such actions in other pack preda¬
tors; consequently they did not in themselves cause
a transition to higher level of higher nervous activity.
The use of tools (weapons) in hunting activities made
the hunt itself much more productive; the killing
of the animal, butchering of the carcass, and the
digging up of roots and collecting of fruits during
food-gathering, and the extracting of small animals
from their burrows, were hardly capable of cardinal¬
ly altering the character of relations in group activi¬
ties; hence, a conclusion that explains the relative

stability of the volume and morphological structure
of the brain in the transition from hominids’ simian
ancestors to Australopithecus. It is unlikely that
Australopithecines had any fundamentally new stim¬
uli to exchange signals compared with hunting pack
predators. Therefore, although the stock of informa¬
tion must have increased in them compared with
anthropoid apes, yet the increase did not have the
character of qualitative growth, did not give rise to a
reorganisation of communicative means, and only
necessitated, we may suppose, a certain very small
increase in sound signals.

Does that mean, speaking of the individual speech
function, that Australopithecines expressed their
emotional state by a larger number of sounds than
anthropoid apes, especially chimpanzees, and em¬
ployed them as informative signals? It means that the
signals did not change in character, and simply that
Australopithecines may have had several score or so
of signals instead of the 20 or 30 of chimpanzees.
Naturally, they formed a vocal-informative system
of greater capacity than that of bands of chimpan¬
zees. But in either case it is not a matter of a quali¬
tatively different system of communication; the in¬
dividually rich vocalisation of Australopithecines was
not yet speech in our understanding of the concept,
just as their vocal-information system had not be¬
come language. As we said above, experiments in
teaching chimpanzees a language of gestures, and their
success, and the possibility of maintaining informa¬
tive connections with them by means of this gesti-
cular language, are still not evidence of the possibility
of animals’ mastering human speech, since that possi¬
bility is programmed on the whole by the training;
the difference between use of such a language and
real human speech is roughly the same as between
the passion, grace, expressiveness, inimitable, indi¬
vidually coloured and constantly changing move¬
ments of a talented ballerina and the movements of
a trained dressage horse, which may be amazingly
beautiful and plastic but are on the whole the re¬
sult of skilfull training. Munin’s paper (1976)

14-294

L

209

contains a detailed analysis of all the experiments
made, and a solid substantiation of a negative evalua¬
tion of their significance for affirming the existence
of a real speech function in chimpanzees. Most
of the workers who took part in the discussion of
the paper in Current Anthropology (in which it was
published), supported his point of view. If we do not
see a qualitative difference in the communicative vo¬
calisation of chimpanzees and of Australopithecines,
it is fair to postulate an absence of a real speech func¬
tion in the latter.

When I compared the morphological criteria of
the hominid family with those of labour activity or
tool use above I got a full coincidence of them in
time which allowed me to postulate that labour be¬
gan with the appearance of the first men. I cannot
repeat that about speech; it arose after the beginning
of labour and the appearance of the first men, and
arose on the basis of a morphology already advanced
in certain respects and a certain number of already
developed, fixed work operations. I do not equate
the communicative vocalisation of Australopitheci¬
nes and chimpanzees but see a certain quantitative
complication in the individual vocalisation and vocal-
informative system of the former, as I have already
said; qualitatively it belonged in the animal world in
which it had grown. The intricate dialectic of anthro-
pogenesis is reflected in that; it is a multilevel pro¬
cess embracing the moulding of morphology and
psychophysiology, and language, and human culture,
which developed in accordance with their own laws
and at various rates, so that they did not coincide in
stages, or did not fully coincide in the main stages of
their progressive evolution, beginning at the very
sources of the appearance of the first men and hu¬
man society. Australopithecus was a hominid, but a
mute one, if I may so express it; that does not mean
that it did not emit sound signals but rather that these
signals did not build up into a system of human
speech and language.

I thus put the origin of real human speech at a
later age. I regard it as the result of a certain level of

J

210

development already reached (which arose at an ex¬
tremely early stage in the evolution of society) but
which had already amassed certain results of labour,
i.e. increased interaction between members of the
primordial groups during labour operations, the more
complicated sphere of interpersonal relations, and the
growing level of the psychological deyelopment of
separate individuals requiring an information outlet
(Engels wrote of the developing need to say some¬
thing to one another). I have already mentioned above
the marked increase in the mass of the brain with
the transition from Australopithecines to men proper,
and from one older subfamily to another later one,
and also the formation of a special structure, i.e. a
prominence not previously recorded in the region of
the localisation of the speech and hearing functions,
as a result of processes of some sort linked with the
forming of speech or with substantial changes in its
character. The change in both the volume of the brain
and its structure in essential details indicate (from my
point of view) that speech took shape precisely at
that stage, and that the line of demarcation between
Australopithecines and men proper, in the narrow
sense, formed by the second element of the homi- ,
nid triad, viz., the shaping of a real human hand with
opposability of the thumb, a purely morpholog¬
ical attribute, can be supplemented by speech and
language, i.e. truly human means of intercourse. It
was thus the subfamily of Homininae , genuine men,
and not the family of Hominidae, that became the
possessor of this fundamental acquisition in the
sphere of communication.

What were the initial forms of speech and lan¬
guage? If we reject the hypothesis of Pithecanthropes’
affective cries, which did not differ in principle from
the communicative vocalisation of Australopitheci¬
nes, we must obviously resort to linguistic extrapo¬
lation so as to reconstruct, however approximately,
the forms of speech of the former.

Before I pass to a description of the morphologi¬
cal pattern of the speech of Pithecanthropes, I must
say that language in itself and in its typology does not

14 *

211

contain any hints of the sequence of the origin of
its structured elements. It is a hierarchically formed
system, as has been clearly and convincingly demon¬
strated by much modern research; the transition from
synchronous examination of this system to a dia¬
chronous one is made difficult by many circum¬
stances. Hence the great, still unresolved disputes
among linguists as to the sequence of the forming of
language structure, and of the rise of separate gram¬
matical and syntactical categories. Meshchaninov’s clas¬
sic book (1945) provides a certain idea of these disputes.
The vagueness of the way of reconstructing the succes¬
sion of the historical forms of language can be over¬
come, however, it seems to me, by extralinguistic ob¬
servations, namely by inquiry into speech defects
associated with local lesions of the cerebral cortex
of one sort or another. Such defects disinhibit cer¬
tain ancient speech mechanisms, ‘man’s psychic ru¬
diments’, so to say, about which Mechnikov wrote
(1905, 1907). But when we treat speech defects as
relics of a former state of the speech function (and
this approach is largely debatable), they do not
contain any indications of what time in the history
of hominids they should be referred to. Yet we have
no other road than to employ the character of the
speech function in these defects to judge its ancient
states, employing all the data, of course, with great
circumspection and reconstructing the initial states
only in general, without going into details.

With certain, particularly deep brain lesions the
speech function is reduced to a capacity of pronounc¬
ing separate words, that signify objects, without
linking them in any way by verbs. In other words
the expression of thought is reduced to designating
objects but not to designating actions, as many theo¬
retical linguists insist when dealing with the early
stages of the formation of speech. These observa¬
tions correspond quite well to the results of study of
the process that accompanies an infant’s assimila¬
tion of words. It apprehends a word very amorphous¬
ly in early childhood, and often muddles its sense;
when apprehending a word, it associates it not with

212

the thing to which it refers but with something else
similar to or identical with it in an attribute that
strikes the eye. In the first days of its ontogenetic
development a word is polysemantic, and is appre¬
hended not as the designation of a single object but
as that of a group of similar things.

With the bigger brain of Pithecanthropes and
significant reorganisation of its structure, the vol¬
ume and macrostructure (i.e. the outer structure) of
the frontal lobes remained at a quite primitive level,
little different from what we see in the endocrania
of Australopithecines. By analogy, even though the
analogy is rather superficial, it can be supposed that
the speech of Pithecanthropus consisted of separate
words, mainly designating objects. At the beginning
of the last century L. Haiger advanced arguments for
the idea that implements and utensils were often
called by the name of the corresponding actions. In
principle that way of forming words can never be
proved; the reverse is no less probable. But at the
same time, by employing the results of study of lan¬
guages of an incorporating type, to which linguists
have always paid considerable attention when recon¬
structing the initial stages of speech (an incorporating
language is one in which the verb merges with a noun,
a definition with the defined, forming compound
word-sentences into which the speech flow breaks
down), another point can be suggested, namely that
the earliest sound designations of objects, after a
certain period of development and transformation
along the line of refinement and narrowing their mean¬
ing, incorporated the designations of elements of an
action associated with some object or another, be¬
coming transformed into a word-sentence. It would
have been difficult to construct a long, meaningful,
eloquent monologue of any kind by means of such
word-sentences, but they would have fully met the
needs at first of primitive dialogue. Yakubinsky’s bril¬
liant study (1923) convincingly demonstrated the
origin of monologic speech from dialogic. The wide
spread of dialogic speech in later stages of mankind’s
historical evolution in the oldest texts that have come

213

down to us is indirect confirmation of that.

A third point can thus be presumed, that Pithe¬
canthropes’ elementary speech was dialogic and
not monologic, that it fully served the communi¬
cation needs of the separate members of the group,
and of the group as a whole, but not the needs of self-
expression of any one individual, and worked in the
context of a collective and not individual psychology.
The old idea of theorists of Greek tragedy and of
theatre historians that monologue arises on the stage
from dialogue as the mode of expression of an older
form of consciousness finds confirmation in the re¬
construction of dialogue speech that I have sug¬
gested.

Because of the limited character of the structural,
sense, and expressive aspects of this primitive dialog¬
ic speech, the thesaurus of primitive language was
extremely small and developed extremely slowly.
But, like modem languages, it was obviously an
open system subject to external influences and en¬
riched through sound designations for the more and
more new objects coming into the field of view of
Pithecanthropes during their use of tools. The ques¬
tion immediately arises in regard to this primitive
language of what form it originated in, whether as
a single language characteristic of all territorial bands
of Pithecanthropes, or as a multiplicity of languages
belonging to separate territorial groups which, by
their geographical distribution, create a picture of lin¬
guistic diversity remotely resembling the situation in
the modem world. Direct feeling and our everyday
experience oppose the first of these hypotheses;
the picture of a single language throughout the then
ecumene is too unlike the modem picture, and too
unusual, which finds expression as well in the logical
line of argument. The existence of separate species in
the genus Pithecanthropus is evidence in itself of the
strong effect of genetic barriers within the genus
and so of the isolation of the separate groups of
Pithecanthropes from one another. But the geographi¬
cal spread of members of this genus, as we imag¬
ine it, could also have promoted the shaping of

214

a language in many, territorially confined, forms.
The fewness of the ancient groups, and the relative
uneventfulness of their existence over thousands of
years, could not (as I have said) have promoted rap¬
id change in the sphere of thought and language.
It was because of the paucity of these groups and
their very weak links with one another that the pri¬
mordial initial languages of Pithecanthropine bands
must have been very numerous. On the grounds of
what I have said I can therefore assert with some cer¬
tainty that the original form of the exercise of the
speech function was cast in a mould of exceptional
variety of concrete manifestations and that the laws
of statistical probability, and that mode of thinking
by which the answer to problems is reached by trial
and error, could possibly have played no small
role in that intricate process.

When we enter the sphere of problems associated
with reconstruction of the speech and language of
Neanderthals we encounter a not very large increase
of concrete information compared with the preced¬
ing epoch but, on the other hand, we come up
against a much more diverse conflict of views, and
must consider the results of discussions that are cur¬
rently active. While sticking to my chosen path (to
keep close to the facts and not to fall into theo¬
retical speculations that do not stem directly from
them), let me recall the points already stressed above
(extraordinarily important as regards the aspect of
the character of Neanderthal speech that interests
me), namely the exceptional increase in the mass of
the brain to nearly the modern level, and the appro¬
ximation of the cerebral macrostructure to the
modem type, which allowed me earlier to single out
the genus Homo , lumping Neanderthals and the con¬
temporary species of man together. It can be sup¬
posed that speech passed to the next stage in its devel¬
opment, coming substantially closer to modern
speech. That could have been expressed both in a
complicating of its structural components and in an
extension of the phonological repertoire and assimi¬
lation of new sounds. Recalling the brain lesions

215

reviewed above, which cause a primitivising of speech
structure, it can be supposed that there are grounds
for seeing in the speech of Neanderthals the first form¬
ing in the history of speech of structural grammat¬
ical categories with a still inadequately developed
syntax. At that stage there was possibly a personal¬
ity revaluation so to say, a recognition of one’s
Ego that could have given rise to monologic speech.
Neaderthal man spoke, but it must be supposed that
his speech structurally resembled a child’s first speech I
experiments, requiring only very simple grammati¬
cal constructions.

As for the phonetic aspect of the matter the numer¬
ous experiments in artificial modelling of Nean¬
derthal speech (using a morphological structure hy¬
pothetically reconstructed for this species) have in¬
dicated, it seems, that Neanderthaloids could not pro¬
nounce such sounds as [i] , [ou], and [a] (see, for
example, Lieberman, 1975, 1977). It was concluded
that Neanderthal speech was distinguished by incom¬
plete articulation compared with modern speech. But
the latest research in comparative anatomy has not
confirmed that (Wind, 1981). So the question re¬
mains open, but the final answer will not seemingly
alter the principal view of Neanderthal speech much in
essence; even if it was not fully articulated, that con¬
cerned separate sounds important in the general pho¬
nological system of speech, but there are no grounds
for ascribing a decisive role to those sounds when de¬
ciding whether or not we are dealing with articulated
speech. Neanderthaloids seemingly articulated most
sounds, like modem man, differing only in small
modifications.

When passing to an examination of the language*
of Neanderthal groups (precisely languages and not
language, because a diversity of the development
of forms of language structure, vocabulary, and pos¬
sibly even phonetic variations, is very probable, as
I argued above in relation to groups of Pithecan¬
thropes), it may be supposed that they contained a
basic stock of forms characteristic of modern lan¬
guages as well, except very intricate grammatical con-

216

structions that also do not exist in the languages of
many modem primitive peoples. The vocabulary had,
of course, increased in richness compared with the
preceding stage. Study of the artificial artefacts from
bone, horn, and stone from Mousterian sites, left by
Neanderthal man, which have a comparatively regular
ornamentation and are perhaps justly interpreted as
evidence of intricate symbols in Neanderthaloids’
thinking, and so of developed speech (Marshack,
1976) is of indirect but substantial significance for
evaluating this wealth. Similar observations naturally
fit in with what I said in the previous chapter about
the complexity of the Mousterian culture as a whole-
dwellings distinguished by a complexity of con¬
struction, a cult of the dead, etc.

The observations mentioned above on the char¬
acter of the distribution of archaeological cultures
within the chronological limits of the Neanderthal
stage are essential for evaluating the boundaries of the
diversity of concrete languages in separate Neander¬
thal bands. It is difficult in principle to imagine the
existence of a causal link between a certain linguis¬
tic structure and the use of some tradition of work¬
ing stone; the link, if there was one, must have been
very devious and multistaged. But it can be thought
that groups united by common traditions of making
tools could have associated with one another and con¬
sequently have spoken understandable, i.e. related,
languages to one another. Such an approach possib¬
ly opens the way to investigating the boundaries of
the forming of groups of related languages, or initial
language families, on a basis of original linguistic di¬
versity.

The further development of the frontal lobes in
modern man, with preservation of a relatively stable
total volume of the brain, compared with Neander¬
thals, can be interpreted as a morphological precon¬
dition of full assimilation of the structural possibili¬
ties of language both grammatical and syntactical.
Parallel with that there were,'of course, further pro.-
cesses of language development, above all an exten¬
sion of territorial links in the course of mankind’s

217

cultural history, which led to the formation of broad
groups of related languages, and the development of
such groups on the basis of local groups of dialects,
in short, to reorganisation of the language composi¬
tion of Upper Palaeolithic and later humankind.
Some of these processes will be considered later;
here it is important to stress that the structural dif¬
ferentiation of languages did not stop with the for¬
mation of modern man, and a broadening of the
repertoire of new forms continued throughout the
further evolution of humanity. The sophistication of
modem languages in transmitting the most varied
nuances of thought and finest details of natural
phenomena and processes is the fruit of thousands
of years of evolution already within the history of
man of the modern type.

It is to the point here to sum up the foregoing
exposition. I adduced arguments above that the
origin of human speech and language did not coin¬
cide with the beginning of labour and the forming of
the family of hominids, but that it came later with
the forming of the subfamily of Homininae. The bio¬
logical premise of the forming of the speech function
was the communicative vocalisation of man’s simian
ancestors. The vocal-informative system that ensured
transmission of information in the world of living
creatures can be taken as a remote analogy to lan¬
guage. Individual utterances and language were not giv¬
en originally and were not passed on by heredity;
they could only have been assimilated during ontoge¬
netic development in a social medium. I have disting¬
uished three stages in the chronological dynamic of
speech and language: (a) that of Pithecanthropus—
words as designations of objects, passing only in
separate cases into word-sentences, and dialogic
speech; (b) that of Neanderthal man—modern or close
to modern articulation, mastery of very simple
grammar and syntax, development of monologic
speech; (c) that of modem man—full mastery of
modern articulation, further development of the
structural categories of language, and a still on-going |
extension of vocabulary.

5

THE PALAEOPSYCHOLOGY OF MAN

Palaeopsychology: the limits and
possibilities of reconstruction

Man has always been interested in himself. The
thinkers of antiquity were already pondering on
problems in science connected with man’s psychic
world. The historical and philosophical literature,
memoirs, fiction, and artistic works are full of various
statements about the psychic stamp of outstanding
people, and psychological descriptions of members
of various social estates and nations. Some of them
were canonised by everyday consciousness and lan¬
guage and became commonplace—‘the noble knight’,
‘the huckstering bourgeois’, ‘the stiff Englishman’,
‘the expansive Frenchman’. And although these com¬
monplace names are highly conventional we each
understand that they contain an element of a real evalu¬
ation; they are somehow the resultant of many, many
thousands of separate individual observations, and
somehow sum up collective, everyday experience.

These observations, sometimes naive, sometimes
mature and shrewd, while far from a science of the
psychic properties of individuals and groups, a science
that is only now being created on a broad expe¬
rimental basis, successfully took its place, creating
the grounds for judgments and practical actions that
called for psychological appraisals of people and si¬
tuations. Such evaluations were so absorbing for
People of all times that they often took the place of
teal scientific analysis in historical works and for long
centuries before Marxism’s discovery of objective,
historical-materialist laws, the science of history re-

219

mained a periscientific impressionism, a sum of more
or less plausible subjective impressions and descrip¬
tions.

While personal psychological descriptions began to
be built into a system already in the works of the hu¬
manists and enlighteners of the eighteenth century,
a scientific approach to group psychology (which
later came to be called social and ethnic psychology)
took shape much later. The first works with a cir¬
cumstantial outline of the history of cultural, psy¬
chological inquiries, i.e. investigations in the compa¬
rative psychology of various cultures and peoples
(Bourguignon, 1973), date from the beginning of our
century, and only the books of the German ethnolog¬
ist and traveller, A. Bastian, which touched on prob¬
lems of a comparative psychological description of
various cultures and peoples, was an exception, in
belonging to the last quarter of the nineteenth cen¬
tury. There has also been an intensive development of
concrete study of separate cultures and the psycholog¬
ical features of their bearers, and attempts to build
a general theoretical platform for an approach to
social and ethnic psychology. But, in spite of the
increase in concrete material to almost unsurveyable
limits, and in spite of the immense work to itemise
and describe the many social institutions of separate
cultures and the psychological group stereotypes be¬
hind them, we are still far from a concrete under¬
standing of the laws of the moulding of social-psy¬
chological trend, especially of that branch of sci¬
ence that covers collective psychology.

Quite a full idea of what has been achieved in that
field—of the quantity and diversity of the facts amas¬
sed, the character of the observations made, and the
approaches to their theoretical comprehension—is
provided by the biggest of the available compendia
of psychological knowledge, written by a big group
of authors under the editorship of such major autho¬
rities as Gardner Lindzey and Elliot Aronson (1954),
and its second, supplemented edition, published 14
years later. If we supplement the vast information
and bibliography contained in its five volumes by a

220

later review of the inquiries that have been made in
the field of ‘social psychiatry’, we will have avail¬
able the main information accumulated by profession¬
al psychologists, put into scientific circulation by
them, and employed for comparative purposes. Un¬
fortunately, these two surveys in the main reflect
the level of research reached in English-speaking
countries.

What do I need to stress in connection with my
theme of the forming of human society and the tasks
of reconstructing the main features of primitive
thought in the early stages of primordial history?
For all the abundance of the material available and
the analysis of it, the historical aspect of psycholog¬
ical research is still poorly developed. Despite the
fact that a special trend of historical psychological
inquiry has taken shape, which has now been canon¬
ised as ‘historical psychology’ and has already be¬
come known through a number of studies of the psy¬
chology of separate social groups and even histori¬
cal periods, especially of the Greeks of the archaic
period, or the European Middle Ages, there are few
quite exact facts in this field; the main point is that
it is not clear how they are to be obtained, and
what the effective method of historical psychologi¬
cal work should be. Still, as a matter of fact, progress
is being made by way of more or less ingenious ana¬
lysis of the historical information, including histori¬
cal documents and literature, i.e. this progress is gov¬
erned by the standard of the worker’s qualifications
and how serious he is when working with source ma¬
terial. It is to the point, incidentally, because of the
ideological sources of modern historical psychology
and its tie-up only with the research efforts of French
and American scholars, to stress that the historical
psychological approach was quite distinctly expressed
in the theoretical precepts and concrete practical
work of spokesmen of the various trends of Russian
literary studies and criticism, like A. N. Veselovsky,
A. N. Pypin, and D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, which
is now forgotten about in the exposition of modern
interest in historical psychological knowledge.

221

The reconstruction of the psychological situations
of past ages and of the collective actions of separate
social and ethnic groups, while it has yielded inter¬
esting results and opened up a new field for the
joint efforts of psychologists and historians, having
demonstrated the fruitfulness of these joint efforts,
is limited as regards method, and, thus, limited in
obtaining sufficiently objective, unambiguous results,
i.e. in that which constitutes the very core, clearest
feature, and strong side of scientific research. And
that is so, I repeat, in spite of extremely effective
results in several specific fields. This limitation is the
stronger, of course, the more remote the time from
today and the fewer the historical sources, even
though they are partly provided by material me¬
morials (especially memorials of art, which are so
important and informative in historical psychological
reconstructions).

When we pass to primitive societies, ethnology
yields vast information; it has accumulated quite co¬
lossal data about societies at various levels of social
development. But an exceptional, fundamental dif¬
ficulty in employing all these very extensive and
most interesting data is that the problems of the
possibility and legitimacy of extrapolating the pre¬
sent-day primitive state to remote antiquity, and of
the justice of transferring observations of, say, the
structure and psychological climate of present-day
hunter societies to those of the Upper Palaeolithic,
have not been tackled either in the historical or the
special ethnological periodisation. The direct identifi¬
cation of certain primitive peoples with stages of de¬
velopment of primitive society (which was popular
twenty or thirty years ago) is now rightly rejected as
a completely formal exercise. That also makes the
ethnological material vulnerable, for all its immense
value, as regards the objectivity of the psychological
reconstruction (just like the results of an analysis of
historical documents). There are therefore very many
disputes, as well, around the psychological type of
primitive peoples and the psychic features of their
present-day representatives.

222

Zoopsychology has encountered difficulties of its
own, many of a fundamental character. No matter
how exact the method of zoopsychological experi¬
ment, and it is now no whit less exact, or hardly less
exact, than physiological experiment, which it par¬
tially overlaps; no matter how precise the method of
zoopsychological observation, especially since the
founding and development of modern ethology, the
science of the behaviour of wild animals, which has
literally been making seven-league strides these days;
and no matter how many separate concrete facts
have been amassed on the reactions of animals in dif¬
ferent situations to some effect of the environment,
other organisms, and man; the amplitude of the view¬
points within which these facts can be interpreted is
so broad that an unequivocal choice between them is
more the consequence of certain theoretical princi¬
ples than of specific conformity of the facts to
one, and only one, conception. What we mean here
are the many details of the display of animals’ psy¬
chic life. Though certain fundamental features of
their psyches (the genetic conditionality of instincts,
say) can be taken as firmly established. The range of
views in zoopsychology still stretches, therefore,
from a certain anthropomorphism in the interpreta¬
tion of facts to an almost complete denial of acts of
comprehension of any sort in animals (though most
workers are very well aware of the lack of perspec¬
tive and narrowness of these extreme views).

As for the state of the zoopsychological facts
themselves, they have been gathered with great full¬
ness, and characterise the behaviour of animals that
are on various rungs of the evolutionary ladder. The
main behavioural reactions have therefore been des¬
cribed in detail, and their complication and evolu¬
tionary dynamic have been carefully traced from
lower to higher forms; an idea of that is given by some
of the major handbooks and manuals dealing with the
characteristics and evolution of animal behaviour
as a whole. Interestingly, most of the discoveries of
scientific interest in both content and seriousness
made in the past two or three decades do not concern

223

individual behaviour (quite well studied in the preced¬
ing period, which found reflection in the two works
of such a major comparative psychologist in Russia
as V. A. Wagner that summarised the main facts),
but rather group behaviour and its role in the dynam¬
ics of populations and microevolution. Striking
facts have been discovered in this field, especially
as regards mutual help among animals; these are the
various forms of altruistic behaviour and what is in
essence sparing rivalry among males in many species
(one can even say in the overwhelming majority of
species), which never ends up in grave wounds, let
alone death, the unusually finely balanced and pur-
posively organised behaviour of females, and the im¬
mense variety of behavioural reactions in which par¬
ents’ care for offspring is manifested. In short, there
is a vast range of behaviour much of which looks so
complex and purposive that it is difficult to deny
that it has some, albeit limited, rational basis. And in
fact, the view that there is elementary reasoning in
animals (which is backed by many experimental
facts) is now gaining more and more supporters.

But neither the facts of zoopsychology now amassed
nor the factual material put at our disposal by his¬
torical psychology, provides a straight answer to
the main question interesting me, namely whether the
thinking of ancient hominids falls within the stream
of animals’ rational activity or contains a truly hu¬
man element. There is no obvious a priori choice in
favour of the second possibility, but the first does not
seem adequate to reality, since it is impossible, with¬
out certain cardinal shifts in thinking, to explain the
transition to labour and tool-making.

A third source for reconstructing the thought pro¬
cess of fossil hominids is the line already consid¬
ered of examining the chronological development
of the morphological structures of the brain in the
light of their functional interpretation. This, too, is
an extremely disputable path because of the very
complicated transition from the morphology of the
brain to psychology (also mediated by many factors);
yet at the same time it has already proved quite

224

effective for analysing problems of the origin of
speech. Anthropologists have long been trying,
since the first decade of our century, to reconstruct
the level of psychic development of ancient hominids,
employing endocrania, natural or more often artifi¬
cial casts of the inner cavity of the brain case. They
have done so very mechanistically, though, in accord¬
ance with the still very imperfect notions of the
working of the brain prevalent at the time. Palaeonto¬
logists, following the anthropologists, turned to stu¬
dy and functional interpretation of the macrostruc¬
ture of the brain; to them we owe the term ‘palaeo-
neurology’, which has come into common use. A
pioneer in this field, and the author of the first clas¬
sic on the brain of fossil animals, Tilly Edinger
(1929), later published a series of studies of the brain
of birds, with which bird genealogy begins, of the an¬
cestors of the horse, etc. A passionate propagandist
for such research in the Soviet palaeontological litera¬
ture was Y. A. Orlov (1947, 1949) who did much to
study the brain of ancestors of present-day Mustelae
(martens, weasels). But anthropologists have been
interested in much more detailed reconstructions,
when investigating the character of fossil man’s
thought; but these reconstructions have also given
rise to disputes over the solutions proposed.

Finally, there is a fourth source of information on
the psychic world of fossil hominids, and seemingly,
the last at present, namely, everything discussed in
Chapter 4, that they have left in the form of material
relics of their activity. The 150 years of the existence
of Palaeolithic archaeology have given us many
examples of brilliant ingenuity in the interpretation
of these material aspects aimed at reconstructing the
mental world of ancient man. Most of the reconstruc¬
tions, unfortunately, have been undertaken in
connection with problems of the time of the origin
and early stages of the evolution of religion and art,
or in connection with the moulding and evolution of
early forms of social organisation. Psychologists have
hardly scratched the surface of this exceptionally
abundant, critically reliable, trustworthy material in

15-294

225

their efforts to reconstruct the main stages of human
thinking, so that the reconstructions in the psycho¬
logical literature have almost always been specula¬
tive, and have left us almost boundless, unutilised
possibilities of appealing to the archaeological mate¬
rial. But there is no developed method or clarity
about the boundaries for using archaeological data for
this purpose at our disposal, or finally, I repeat, expe¬
rience of convincing earlier attempts needed to
plough this virgin soil, so that the results cannot be
particularly effective at first. But the vastness of the
archaeological material itself is unique in this respect;
its reflection of process that took place in the ecu-
mene, its close links with human activity, and the
existence itself of thinking as a result of this activity
(the material embodiment, as it were, of mental phe¬
nomena, while the latter are activity transferred to
the sphere of consciousness),—all make a reconstruc¬
tive psychological approach to the archaeological
data extremely promising and really necessary.

So there are four sources for reconstructing the
laws of fossil hominids’ thinking, to wit, the histori-
co-psychological, zoopsychological, palaeoneurolog-
ical, and archaeological. Each has its own specific
features, and each provides certain results unrepeat¬
able in the context of the inquiries of the other; yet
they can all, at the same time, in the aggregate, be
controlled by one another. Such is the intricate dia¬
lectic of the reconstruction of man’s psychic func¬
tions in the early stages of his evolution; comparison
of the zoopsychological and historico-psychological
materials outlines the limits of the reconstruction;
palaeoneurology and archaeology help reconstruct
the sequence of the transitional phenomena at the
chronological boundary between the higher nervous
activity of higher animals and the psyche of mod¬
em man. The reconstruction itself constitutes the
substance of a science that can be called human pa-
laeopsychology and that deserves to be singled out
as a special discipline according to the specific charac¬
ter of the subject-matter of inquiry since, though it
overlaps the interests of other sciences, it at the same

226

time conveys information not reducible to any one of
them and extremely important for the overlapping
fields of knowledge as a whole.

When any independent, self-contained science is
being distinguished it is extremely important to de¬
fine its content distinctly compared with neighbour¬
ing disciplines. In that connection the relation be¬
tween human palaeopsychology and the department
of evolutionary physiology that concerns itself with
study of the dynamics of specifically human func¬
tions is a point of paramount importance. Evolu¬
tionary physiology, as a special line of physiological
research, has accumulated an enormous number of
facts about the functioned activity of various analys¬
ers in the animal kingdom, the character of the
transitions from one level of functional activity to
another, and the paths of achieving better working
of any one analyser in the course of evolution. Evo¬
lutionary psychology, which embraces zoopsychol¬
ogy and the psychology of man as a whole, has not
reached the same level of development as evolutiona¬
ry physiology; it has not employed experiment for
quite as long, and it has its own specific and extreme¬
ly substantial difficulties when interpreting the
data of experience, experiment, and observations. But
it can also now operate with a definite, quite devel¬
oped conception of behaviour from the lowest forms
to the highest. It is a higher, supers true tural stage,
as it were, in relation to physiological knowledge;
the latter is knowledge of the material substratum of
the psyche, which is ultimately the sum of knowl¬
edge of the ideal. The category of the ideal, in devel¬
oped form, is inherent only in man of the modern
type, but its sources, and the sources of conscious
psychic activity, lie in anthropogenesis, and must be
thought to go back in its simplest forms to animals.

What are the most fundamental structural compo¬
nents of the psyche of fossil hominids amenable to
investigation by human palaeopsychology? They can
only be defined, of course, through the structural
organisation of modern man’s psyche. That means
that, if there were any distinctive phenomena in the

15 *

227

psyche of fossil man, proper only to it, we cannot
discover them, unless have modern analogies of them.
The psychic substratum, the structure of psychic
activity, is the main item in the subject-matter of pa-
laeopsychology, but it is given in psychic phenome¬
na proper to modern man. Investigation of ma¬
terial relics of the activity of fossil men (which are
material traces of their psychic functions) naturally
yields something, but this ‘something’ can only be
interpreted by analogy with the psychic activity of
modem man. When developing this analogy, it can
be thought that the character of the logical, proper¬
ties of memory, images, symbols, and imagination
(if it existed), the level of development of associa¬
tions, and elementary oppositions, and finally (which
is specially important) how dialectical thinking arose,
are all structural components of the psyche of fossil
man that must be reconstructed within the context
of palaeopsychology. Which of this list can be re¬
constructed successfully and which are not satisfac¬
torily reconstructible will be decided in the course
of my further exposition. But one point is already
clear now; it is a very important result of my ear¬
lier exposition, namely that human palaeopsycho¬
logy is an exceptionally important field of knowl¬
edge. Without certain of its achievements it is dif¬
ficult to imagine progress toward a satisfactory in¬
terpretation of many features of the early stages of
the evolution of early hominids’ ideology and social
life. Development of the problematic connected with
human palaeopsychology is thus at the same time de¬
velopment of the most important themes of the his¬
tory of primitive society in its early stages.

The Nature of the Logical, Sphere of Consciousness,
and the Unconscious in Primitive Thought

Before scientific and philosophical thought became
aware of the length of the evolutionary process that
led to the forming of modern man, and of the very
fact of the naturalistic origin of man and of the

228

forming of the main social institutions at the dawn of
history, it had already been drawn to examples of the
primitive state and the idea of the savage (meaning by
that present-day primitive peoples), and painted their
social set-up and cultural traditions in naive, panegyr¬
ic tones. In the lively, clearly written book of the
Italian scholar Cocchiara (1960) on the history of
folklore studies and study of folk culture in European
countries, and on its refraction in the consciousness
of great European thinkers from the Middle Ages
onward, there are many interesting facts illustrating
how far such giants of European culture as Mon¬
taigne, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Diderot were from
a scientific approach to the primitive state, represent¬
ing it as the golden age of human society and culture.
For me, however, it is not these views but the at¬
titude to primitive man himself and his psychology
that are interesting in themselves in this context, i.e.
the ‘savage’ (it was this term that was used to desig¬
nate the man of the primitive state): good, honest,
virtuous, unselfish, he embodied all the ideals already
long lost by developed civilisation. All that is now
perceived as a flight of fantasy, but the first move¬
ment toward knowledge in this field began with it,
and these ideas can be regarded as the first attempt,
albeit speculative and remote from real life, to re¬
construct the psychological world of primitive man.

In the next stage their place was taken by a real
desire to penetrate the psychic world of primitive
man (through the accumulation of the observations
of travellers and explorers and the first investigators
of the diversity of human culture, and disclosure of
concrete knowledge about primitive beliefs, rites and
rituals, and customs of peoples backward in their
development, sometimes cruel and terrifying to Euro¬
pean observers in their savagery, and often quite in¬
comprehensible).

Much information had already been amassed in the
age of ancient civilisations about the peoples around
them but the first steps to systematise it, put it into
order, and use it to construct an integrated picture of
primitive culture and primitive thought began to be

229

taken in the middle of the last century. They were
consecutively cast later in the form of evolutional, dif-
fusionist, and Freudian ideas, in the form of functional
and ethnopsychological approaches to the history of
ethnological thought; as the aspect that interests
me, however, they contained an idea, with few ex¬
ceptions, of primitive thought as some sort of psy¬
chological structure differing slightly or not at all
from the similar structure in modem man, the repre¬
sentative of developed civilisation. In other words,
the general conception was reduced to the idea that
primitive man (having in mind primarily any contem¬
porary bearer of a primitive culture, the view can
be extrapolated to fossil man) thought according
to the same laws as civilised man, but less well.
That conception remained essentially unaltered for
decades.

The idea of spheres of consciousness is a modem
heuristic principle that helps us restore primitive
thought. Spheres of consciousness do not exist as
completely independent, self-contained mental struc¬
tures. They interpenetrate each other diffusely, es¬
pecially in contiguous boundary regions, but never¬
theless break up the whole stream of consciousness,
break it down into blocks of some sort within which
information of a precisely given definite character cir¬
culates and is analysed. Spheres of consciousness are
separate districts, as it were, in a vast, constantly
spreading city, whose boundaries are changing and
whose size also alters, but within which there is an
autonomy of sorts. These spheres are not structural
components of consciousness, though they may
perhaps function as such in certain stages of its evo¬
lution; they are more, perhaps, regions of the accu¬
mulation and transformation of information, which
is incorporated into the thought process after the
transformation has already been made. Proceeding
from this principle of the differentiation of spheres
of consciousness, we can name three that are quite
clearly delimited in content from one another: (a)
the sphere of empirical experience; (b) the sphere of
generalisation of the results of empirical experience;

230

and (c) the sphere of abstract thinking. It is hypothe¬
tically quite difficult to reconstruct them in fossil
man, employing only observations of the content
of the psyche of modem primitive people; such a
reconstruction is indeterminate in many important
details, but the functional limits of operation of the
law of participation and of the principles of irra¬
tional logic, can be objectively clarified by it.

The sphere of empirical experience is one of ele¬
mentary direct knowledge, or rather not so much
knowledge as acquaintance with the simplest proper¬
ties of objects, the repetition of natural processes,
and the course of human life. The link between phe¬
nomena in this sphere is simple and single-staged; if
you carelessly stretch a hand out toward fire, you
will be burnt. Even animals have such empirically
acquired experience; in man, however, in connec¬
tion with the diversity of truly human activity, even
in the first stage of its evolution, this experience is
much broader, more varied, and richer than in
animals, and embraces a broader range of. natural pro¬
cesses. Can we not imagine the existence of a group,
or of a single individual, whose behaviour in the sphere
of empirical experience is governed by the ‘laws
of participation’, i.e. by irrational logic rather than by
rational logic? Involvement or participation, in the
broad sense, covers any conceivable link between phe¬
nomena and processes in the real world so long as the
link seems real to man for some reason or other (in
this case to primitive man). The real links reflected
by rational logic come into the logic of participation,
with such a broad interpretation, only as partial cases.
It is therefore quite impossible, when answering
the question posed above, to assume that the logic
of participation, irrational logic, predominated even
partially in the sphere of empirical experience. Even
the simplest forms of existence and labour call for
strict observance of rational, logical rules; without it
the inevitable operation of the laws of nature will
sweep aside everything that opposes them. Primitive
society evolved extremely slowly, yet all the same
progressively, and a first condition of that progressive

231

development could only have been a rational, logical
awareness of the most important natural relations by
the primordial psyche, realising at a higher, qualitative¬
ly different level the purposive manifestations that
are characteristic even of animals’ reflex behaviour.

Thus a rational logic must have initially predo¬
minated in the sphere of empirical experience, and
natural phenomena and processes must have been in¬
terpreted rationally, and primitive man’s reaction to
the natural phenomena around him must have been
rational; finally primitive man must have been ratio¬
nal in his everyday life. Only such behaviour, rational
in the highest degree, cautious, intelligent, and pru¬
dent, foreseeing, could have helped surmount the dif¬
ficulties of the struggle with the natural environment
and neighbouring bands, and created the precondi¬
tions for success in hunting (and consequently for
getting and creating adequate stocks of food). But it
was not just that; there are two other exceptionally
important fields of primitive culture, whose forma¬
tion, and even further development were impossi¬
ble on the basis of irrational behaviour. These were la¬
bour and social relations. Trial and error undoubted¬
ly played a big role in the first attempts to make the
simplest tools, just as it played a much greater role
in apes’ solving of various problems. Experimental
work has shown that this quest is basic for an ape;
only after many repetitions of the experimental si¬
tuations does it pass to more or less intelligent ac¬
tions. No matter how primitive the original tool use
was, there was more intelligence in it, and it must
have been (and could not have helped being) subor¬
dinated to logical comprehension, and the connec¬
tions observed during it between the human actions
and the objects (striking or retouching actions; alter¬
ation of the shape of objects; their suitability for use
as tools) could not help being fixed by the logic of
consciousness so that certain actions could be repeat¬
ed later without extra expenditure of effort and with
greater effect. Irrational logic and the fixing of illu¬
sory and not real relations between human actions
and external objects would in that case have led any

form of tool use up a blind alley at its very beginning.

The same can be said with justification about all
forms of the social ties and relations established in
the primitive bands of fossil man. At first they were
ensured by behaviour of each individual adequate to
others and to any situation, which was expressed not
only in a psychological equilibrium that prevented
aggravation of personal conflicts but also in a ration¬
al, logically justified reaction to the hierarchical sys¬
tem existing in group, blood and kindred relations,
sense of values, and, finally, established traditions.
If the individual’s reaction to one of these categories
was inadequate, or contained an irrational, and unac¬
countable element for the other members of the same
band, or a strange, unusual, frightening element (how¬
ever strongly the social instincts of the individual
who displayed such behaviour were expressed), it
would constantly evoke bewilderment and dissatis¬
faction among those around it, and even ostracism
by them, which in the end would lead to conflicts.

Let us now suppose that there were many individ¬
uals in a band who were guided by irrational logic in
their everyday social behaviour rather than by ration¬
al logic, and by a uniting of the phenomena and re¬
lations that form part of the band’s social life accord¬
ing to logically inexplicable parameters. No group
social actions could then be carried out, and the
band, instead of functioning as a monolithic force
would be converted into an unstable aggregate of
individuals struggling with one another or badly un¬
derstanding one another. So a very elementary ana¬
lysis of the sphere of consciousness embracing empir¬
ical experience indicates that this sphere (both for
primitive man and the individual of developed
modern society) is one of pure logic and that irra¬
tionalism and an associating of things by apparent
connections rather than real ones are not possible
in it; otherwise empirical experience immediately
ceases to be what it is, a powerful stimulus of
progress when transmitted from generation to gener¬
ation. Empirical observations, irrationally interpret¬
ed, would immediately plunge any primitive band

233

into a morass of calamities, and automatically rule
out any chance of its further development.

The sphere of generalisation of the results of em¬
pirical experience cannot be very clearly demarcat¬
ed from that of empirical experience just examined,
since the various spheres interpenetrate quite deeply
in general (as I have already said) and the boundaries
between them are more or less amorphous. It is per¬
fectly obvious that this sphere is the next stage in the
generalisation of empirical observations of the world,
people, people’s relations, natural phenomena, etc.
What are its boundaries and the character of the men¬
tal operations performed, what in it is subordinated,
as in the sphere of empirical experience, to the laws
of logic and what reflects the law of irrational partici¬
pation? And are there not factors of some sort in it
that prevent display of the irrational and promote
predominance of logical laws or, on the contrary,
sustain the manifestation of a mystique of partici¬
pation suppressing operation of the laws of logic?
The first and most important point, it seems to me,
is to establish the volume of the sphere of generali¬
sation of the results of empirical experience. In em¬
bryonic primitive thought, still at the dawn of tool
use, the object of hunt was not perceived simply by
itself but in the whole aggregate of its habits, mode of
life, and relations with the fauna of the area con¬
cerned. A concept of an animal arose in empirical ex¬
perience, a unique aggregate of its characteristic fea¬
tures that made it possible to recognise it in any si¬
tuation. But this concept ceased to be static in the
consciousness of any hunter, and began to live a
robust existence only when it became encrusted with
concepts associated with it. The possibility of recon¬
structing the unknown from what is known about an
animal as the object of the hunt, to forecast its be¬
haviour, say, in the immediate future after it has been
trailed (which only made drive forms of hunting pos¬
sible), is part of the sphere of generalisation of the
results of empirical experience, in my opinion, which .
belongs to the hunting form of primitive man’s life.

To concretise the boundaries of this sphere further,

I must also speak about food-gathering. Purposive,
specialised food-gathering has been recorded and de¬
scribed among many contemporary peoples at the low¬
est levels of social development. It has been repeat¬
edly written, with justification, that such gathering
cannot by itself sustain the life of a band, and is
an auxiliary form of economy that arose compara¬
tively late. But food-gathering, not as a specialised
form of economy but as spontaneous utilisation of
suitable foods, is an integral component of the life
of any vegetarian organism, including primates. Such
foraging was characteristic in the highest degree of
fossil hominids, as well, from the earliest stages of
their evolution. The same thing must have been ex¬
hibited in foraging, food-gathering activity, as in the
hunting cycle, i.e. abandoning of the principle of trial
and error in the quest for edible plants, and a great¬
er or lesser degree of guesswork based on still very
imperfect previous observations of their distribution
and of the plant associations in which they occur.
The path of thought is practically identical—from
concepts of a certain edible plant, and certain semi-
intuitive ideas of the situations in which it has been
found before, to purposive attempts to find it.

What we have said relates to embryonal forms of
the economic cycle, as not very distinctly recorded
by archaeological investigation of sites of the be¬
ginning of the Palaeolithic. But there is still an im¬
mense field of extraeconomic phenomena that the
primitive man came up against, and on which he de¬
pended no less than on the state of food resources;
this is the seasonal rhythms and climatic phenomena.
It is impossible to foresee natural calamities; that is
still not wholly within the powers of modern science,
but it is possible to be clearly aware of the rhythm of
seasonal processes and to adapt to them. After the
dry season follows the rainy season, after day comes
night—these are empirical observations; awareness
of the inevitability of this succession, and of its strict
recurrence, however, is obviously already a generalisa¬
tion of empirical experience; the observation itself
and its generalisation belong to the different spheres

235

of consciousness established above. In the cases of
hunting and food-gathering the generalisation pro¬
motes a more regular supply of food; in the case of
observations and taking stock of the rhythm and char¬
acter of natural processes, it makes it possible to
select and prepare shelters from bad weather, to
choose more convenient places for campsites and
night halts, i.e. to realise the whole life cycle.

Now, when the boundaries of the sphere of gener¬
alisation of empirical experience are more or less
clear, it is time to weigh up the role of logic and irra¬
tional participation within its limits. The foregoing
exposition, I hope, quite consistently leads to the
idea that this sphere, like that of empirical expe¬
rience, is governed in the main by laws of genuine,
rational logic. In fact, mystical participation reigns
where it is necessary to act quickly and promptly;
when an animal is being chased some sort of simply
alogical analogy not supported by real practice oper¬
ates instead of the rational business of predicting
the pattern of its immediate behaviour; as a result
the hunt is a failure and the band is left without
food. Instead of awareness and utilisation of real
knowledge about edible plants in food-gathering and
foraging, fantastical ideas about their occurrence and
the circumstances in which they grow are employed;
again with the same result—the foraging ends up un¬
successful and people remain without food. Finally,
irrational participation on the basis of secondary ana¬
logies flourishes when it is necessary to predict the
weather, and to take this prediction into account
when organising the economic cycle and everyday
life, and seasonal and hunting migrations, and to
build temporary shelters, and make grottos and caves
habitable, and it cannot help leading to muddle
and fatal consequences, grave illnesses, and a lowering
of the productivity of economic activity. It seems ve¬
ry justified to state, that if irrational logic, the logic
of participation by chance, superficial analogies,
could have been manifested in some part of the sphere
of generalisation of empirical experience, its mani¬
festation would have been very, very limited. Further-

I

236

more, it is now difficult to say what its effect was ma¬
nifested in (if it ever happened); rational logic, on the
contrary, probably spread to the whole sphere of
generalisation of the results of empirical experi¬
ence, just as in the previously considered sphere of
empirical experience.

The sphere of abstract consciousness is the most
complex sphere of human consciousness. It is diffi¬
cult to date the beginning of abstraction, and highly
difficult to do so convincingly and without specula¬
tion. But, relying on objective archaeological and
palaeoanthropological observations, it can be supposed
that abstract thought in the full sense originated
in the late stages of anthropogenesis and was asso¬
ciated with the forming of Neanderthal man, and lat¬
er of modem man, on which there are data (as I
said in the chapters on the origin of labour and lan¬
guage) about the forming of symbolic thinking in
their bands, the beginning of art, and so on. Roughly
speaking the sphere of abstract consciousness is that
of theoretical explanation of the most general phe¬
nomena and processes in nature and human society;
at the level of primitive thought it embraces every¬
thing that the French sociologist, student of religion,
and psychologist, Levy-Bruhl, cited in his works as
examples of the ‘law of participation’ and opposed
to the rational logic of civilised man. All forms of
primitive beliefs are largely illogical, like the super¬
stitions of later times, incidentally; their rational ele¬
ment consists more in the striving to explain some
phenomenon or process than in the forms of the ex¬
planation themselves. If Levy-Bruhl limited opera¬
tion of the law he postulated to the context of magic
and the religio-psychological notions of primitive
man, and did not extend it to the whole sphere of
their life, his conception would surely not have
aroused such sharp, and in some bits justified, opposi¬
tion. Furthermore, his exceptional contribution
consisted precisely in his having fully, vividly, and
convincingly demonstrated, like no one else, the role
of the irrational, later passing into mysticism, in ini¬
tial religious notions. Properly speaking they arise as

237

a negation of the rational, since the latter, with its
small stock of empirical experience, did not suf¬
fice to explain the nature around primitive man and
the phenomena of his own psyche.

In order to reconstruct the origin of the sphere of
consciousness and the forming of the logical and irra¬
tional aspects of primitive thinking in chronological
retrospect, it is important to extrapolate everything
I have said to a chronological scale. I have just said
that the sphere of abstract thought, however dif¬
ficult it is to date its origin, probably began to take
shape in the Middle Palaeolithic. The spheres of em¬
pirical experience and of generalisation of its re¬
sults, it must be thought, were inseparable chronolog¬
ically; they arose together with the origin of primi¬
tive thinking itself, and it was part and parcel (it may
be supposed) of the earlier stages of the evolution of
hominids. Let me recall, from the preceding chapter,
that the representatives of the first stage of that evo¬
lution, Australopithecines, did not have a truly human
speech function, and possessed only animal-like mode
of communication. I also expressed doubts there
about the existence of preverbal concepts, and of the
existence of conceptual thinking without language.
If all that is, in fact, justified, then the spheres of
consciousness that I have called those of empirical
experience and of generalisation of its results took
shape with speech and language in the next stage of
hominid evolution, i.e. in the stage of Pithecan¬
thropes. Thought took shape, in that way, not in irra¬
tional form but in an exclusively rational form; the
illogical arose at a certain stage of the development of
thought, and developed further parallel with the
logical.

My differentiation above of three spheres of con¬
sciousness does not completely exhaust the whole
variety of psychic functions. There remains a broad,
independent sphere opposed to the spheres of con¬
sciousness, viz., the sphere of the unconscious. The
work of Freud and his followers, which attained such
immense popularity, was devoted to revealing the
depths of this sphere and its influence on the most

238

diverse manifestations of the human psyche. There
was much that was false in it, as subsequent criti¬
cism convincingly demonstrated, but it also had a
great positive effect in demonstrating the signifi¬
cant role of the unconscious, of deep-seated, uncon¬
ditioned and conditioned reflexes, on the working of
the highest stages of the prepsychic functions. Freud
(1923) tried, in his intemperate enthusiasm for the
unconscious, to examine all the main phenomena of
primitive culture through its prism, which was not
wholly successful since all cultural achievements ob¬
viously grow more from the conscious spheres of the
psyche than from its unconscious sphere. That un¬
successful attempt did not, however, in itself remove
the problems of the unconscious and its place in the
psyche of primitive man. I do not have the space to
set out and critically examine even the main studies
on this theme, so great is their number. To sum up I
would simply stress that the sphere of the uncon¬
scious still calls for further deep study, but I can say
in principle that its role in the primitive psyche was lim¬
ited compared with such spheres of consciousness
as those of empirical experience, and generalisation of
the results of empirical experience, and the sphere of
abstract consciousness

Demonstration Manipulation and the Origin of
Tool Use

In the preceding chapter I tried to sum up the infor¬
mation provided by archaeology for fixing the time
when tool use or labour arose, and for reconstructing
its early stages. Following the normal method of seek¬
ing the sources and initial preconditions of phenom¬
ena in their embryo, I have briefly discussed the in¬
formation available about apes’ handling of external
objects. A specific form of their manipulating (im¬
portant for the matters considered in this chapter),
whose significance is exceptionally great not in itself,
but in connection with the display and strong
development of the imitative function in apes, has re-

239

mained outside our consideration. This is the catego¬
ry of manipulation distinguished and specially studied
by the Soviet worker Fabri (1974), which he called
demonstration manipulation. This form of behaviour
is met in many mammals (adults, as a rule, but not
young animals); apes, however, have a special place
in this regard. Demonstration manipulation is met
very often among them, and is characterised by a
wealth of concrete displays. Other individuals may re¬
peat the manipulator’s actions, but such repetition is
not entirely obligatory. More often than not, perhaps,
it is not repetition that is recorded but attentive watch¬
ing of the manipulating ape’s actions. It is a sort of
theatre of one actor (Fabri uses the term ‘actor’ of
course in a metaphorical sense rather than the direct
one) in which the observing individuals play the role
of spectators.

What is the functional role of such behaviour in
communities of primates? Fabri interprets it as a
combination of communicative-cognitive acts during
which one animal demonstrates already acquired ex¬
perience of acquaintance with some object, while the
other individuals can perceive it at a distance, can
make use of this experience and get knowledge of
an object and its properties without touching it them¬
selves. How could that behaviour be transformed and
serve functionally during the transition to the early
stage of anthropogenesis? In his book on these prob¬
lems, Fabri rightly discussed demonstration mani¬
pulation in the last chapter, entitled ‘Evolution of the
Psyche and Anthropogenesis’, which deals with the
moulding of the human psyche. The role of this
behaviour is undoubtedly great in the more rapid and
fuller spread of expanding experience, especially at
the stage of Australopithecines, when communica¬
tive vocalisation in the absence of speech could have
been successfully supplemented by gesture commu¬
nication. But another aspect of demonstration mani¬
pulation is no less significant; that is its role in the ge¬
nesis of tool use. Practically all specialists in compara¬
tive zoopsychology and ethology have written about
the high development and commonness of imitation

240

in the most diverse animals, and make no exception
as regards the development of apes’ imitative capaci¬
ties. One can readily imagine that some individuals’
simple actions aimed at working objects and touch¬
ing them up, e.g. the simplest striking of a stone,
or the making of a club from wood or bone, are seized
on and more or less successfully copied by others;
the first, simplest technological innovations and tra¬
ditions could have been spread in precisely the same
way. So demonstration handling combined with imi¬
tation could have played a certain role in the tran¬
sition to tool use, i.e. in other words it could have
stimulated mastery (and what is very important to
me, rational mastery) by the whole band of the tech¬
nological discoveries and finds made by its individual
members.

On the Origin of Elementary Oppositions and
Psychic Constants

What is an elementary opposition? This concept is
quite widely employed in psychology, especially
present-day psychology, but it has also spread from
psychology to ethnology and culture studies. Elemen¬
tary oppositions are the simplest classification
principles by which phenomena linked together by
some common tie are at the same time opposed to
one another and singled out from pairs or triplets.
These classification principles by means of elemen¬
tary oppositions were discovered independently at
the turn of the century by R. Dennett in Great Brit¬
ain in 1896, and by Durkheim and Mauss in 1902.
Their inquiries demonstrated the exceptional impor¬
tance precisely of pairs of symbols and binary opposi¬
tions in primitive thought, i.e. opposition on the prin¬
ciple of contrast, on the principle of yes-no, black-
white, etc. Strictly speaking, this form of opposi¬
tion is evidently the most elementary, and perhaps
even primary one, because of its simplicity; so, in any
case, many workers suppose, though as we shall see
a few pages on, it can be viewed from another angle.

16-294

241

Binary oppositions are very common in present-
day primitive groups, or ones close to modernity,
both in the sphere of social structures and in the field
of spiritual culture. Zolotarev (1964) noted a distri¬
bution of social institutions among many peoples
associated with a system of binary oppositions, and,
in particular, demonstrated the role and occurrence of
a cult of twins, dualist in character, in the early stages
of the development of primitive society. Levi-
Strauss (1958) developed a similar approach later
than Zolotarev, but published it earlier; he substan¬
tially supplemented the collection of facts and obser¬
vations illustrating the occurrence almost everywhere
of a dual division and binary opposition in many
social institutions. In addition to bringing out the role
of binary oppositions in the social structure of an¬
cient societies, he adduced many facts witnessing to
their no less widespread occurrence in the sphere of
cults and primitive art; these facts were drawn not
only from folklore and cultural and historical material
but also from analysis of linguistic data from the
angle of binary opposition.

A considerable stock of observations has been
amassed in ethnology illustrating the possibility of
reducing ritual and mythological systems of signs to
general logical structures, to which the binary opposi¬
tions in language are also reducible. Generalisation of
these observations makes it possible to find a parallel¬
ism, as it were, between the series of different sign
systems and to approach the formulation of a hypoth¬
esis of basic logical structures responsible for their
origin, although such a hypothesis also calls for deep¬
er substantiation and further analysis of its under¬
lying conceptual apparatus.

What do all these observations represent? Do they
reflect only certain socially determined features of
the human psyche (a reflection, say, in the mental
sphere, of the fact of a dual organisation of social
institutions which, of course, would look straight¬
forwardly primitive)? Or do they testify to innate
psychic properties of a genetic character rather than
a social one? A general, comprehensive answer is

242

hardly possible at present, because group psycho¬
logical notions have not yet been well studied. Without
thorough research the historical role of a psycholog¬
ical phenomenon cannot be at all fully illuminated;
at the same time it is impossible to clarify sufficient¬
ly how far it is permissible to reduce the genesis of
certain social structures in the oldest human groups
to the action of the innate elements of this factor.

It seems very probable that awareness of one of
the forms of symmetry actually existing in nature
operates as the innate psychic structure from which
binary oppositions are formed. After discovery of the
predominance of one-sidedly symmetrical bodies in
living nature, and construction of the general geometri¬
cal and physical principles of the theory of
symmetry, study of symmetry in both the inorganic
and organic world acquired an immense place in the
practice of all disciplines of the natural-history cy¬
cle. Even a brief survey of everything done in that field
would take me too far from my theme, and only
biological symmetry has a direct bearing on it. The
years of work in this field have made it possible to
bring out and quite rigorously characterise the various
types of symmetry of animate matter. For the prob¬
lem being considered, right-and-left symmetry has
special interest, and also the breakdown of living bod¬
ies into right and left halves, and their concrete exis¬
tence as right- and left-hand symmetrical objects. Fos¬
sil hominids encountered symmetry in this form in
all the most important manifestations of their life—in
the hunt, since right-and-left symmetrical forms had
a basic place among the quarry, in observing such
symmetry in the structure of other people’s bodies,
and finally by becoming aware of it as a property of
their own organism. It will readily be understood
that this right-and-left symmetry in the morpholog¬
ical organisation of man’s earliest ancestors, and of
modem man, was the result of a lengthy evolution¬
ary path of development realised in long series of pre¬
ceding forms.

An important circumstance has to be noted as soon
as we come to the problem of symmetry in the mor-

16 *

243

phology of man and his forebears. We already have
evidence in fossil hominids that there was a func¬
tional asymmetry in the symmetrical morphological
structure relative to the longitudinal plane of the
body, a predominant use of the right hand in labour
operations, and in general counterposing of the right
and left halves of the body in work processes. Care¬
ful study of the shape and character of the symmetry
of stone tools, and of the traces of their work use, led
to the quite justified conclusion that Neanderthal man
worked primarily with his right hand, i.e. that the
functional asymmetry which is also characteristic of
modem man had already taken shape at the Nean¬
derthal stage. Its development was possibly associat¬
ed with the pair function of the cerebral hemi¬
spheres andwas a consequence of some (as yet undiscov¬
ered) tendency in the evolution of the brain. It is
important to say that the role of this pair function is
particularly essential in ensuring spatial orientation;
that point was of special significance in anthropo-
genesis as modes of hunting became more complicated,
caves were mastered as shelters, and quite extensive
hunting grounds exploited, and as a need arose for
long tracking of moving game, and a return home
through an unfamiliar locality, sometimes in the
dark, and so on.

Turning from the functional asymmetry to right-
and-left morphological symmetry, which the former
does not in practice disturb, I must point out that
other, very simple forms of symmetry are also asso¬
ciated with it that later became the foundation for
the most general types of binary opposition, viz.,
the contrasts of top and bottom, front and back,
centre and periphery, etc. These contrasts (their
number must, of course, have been much greater;
an attempt to itemise them in relation to all aspects
of the life of primitive groups would be an interest¬
ing exercise for the science of primitive society),
together with bilateral symmetry, constantly creat¬
ed the prerequisites, when perfecting orientation in
space and in many life situations, for the formation
of a binary symbolics, and with it of binary opposi-

244

tions. There are already theses in the literature of an
analogy between these two series of phenomena
(biological symmetry and paired opposites) but they
have not, unfortunately, been developed in any kind
of complete form.

How can one picture the consolidation of binary
oppositions and pair symbolics in general in the in¬
nate behavioural stereotype of man’s earliest an¬
cestors? It can be supposed, from the information
available, that primates have a functional asymmetry
of the right and left halves of the body, though it is
not so markedly expressed as in modem man.

It is very probable that this asymmetry was inten¬
sified in the earliest hominids as the result of labour
and as a side effect of some, as yet unclear, advan¬
tages that functional asymmetry gave in the course of
labour. Anyhow the intensification of the opposi¬
tion of the right and left halves of the body itself
during anthropogenesis, and the parallelly develop¬
ing function of thinking, must have led, it can be
thought, to an awareness of the contrast of the right
and left hands, and the right and left halves of the
body, in short, to awareness of right-and-left symme¬
try, at some early stage, for example already among
Pithecanthropes. Such an awareness in the psycho¬
logical sphere, obviously also laid the basis for the ori¬
gin of pair symbolics.

It would seem, however, that the matter is not re¬
stricted to this original stimulus and that pair symbolics
had become an element of the psychological sphere
from the very beginning, giving some sort of psycho¬
logical advantage to subjects in whose thinking the
rudiments of binary oppositions had taken shape.
These contrasts were a powerful means of under¬
standing the world in the logical apparatus of primi¬
tive man (who, as I have already mentioned, met pair
oppositions at every step in everyday life). This logi¬
cal apparatus naturally displayed its work in those
spheres of consciousness discussed above that em¬
braced both empirical experience and generalisation
of its results. The capacity to transfer pair oppositions
to the logical sphere and to recognise them as a fun-

245

damental characteristic of the surrounding world
early became an object of the action of selection,
determining success in the hunt, accuracy in spatial
orientation, and even to some extent adequacy of
reactions in conditions of a constantly more com¬
plicated social environment. As the shaping role of
selection weakened in the course of anthropogene-
sis, the effect of the selection mechanism in respect
of this psychological property naturally declined,
and it was subsequently consolidated through an al¬
ready created system of hereditarily determined
reactions.

The pair symbolic is thus, seemingly, not only the
result of awareness of the binary right-and-left sym¬
metry of many mundane natural bodies and rela¬
tions and, on that background, of the morphological
symmetry and functional asymmetry of the human
body, but also of a genetic consolidation of the corre¬
sponding logical structure of selection in the earliest
stages of anthropogenesis and its transfer to the lev¬
el of a congenital behavioural stereotype. I do not
have the space to go into the details of how the phys¬
iological mechanisms of the transfer of acquired mech¬
anisms of behaviour into congenital ones, and of
conditioned reflexes into unconditioned reflexes, took
shape; I refer the reader to the work already pub¬
lished. In answer to the questions posed a few pages
back, whether binary oppositions are only socially
predetermined features of the human psyche or could
have been determined in man by heredity, I must of
necessity prefer the second alternative in the light of
everything I have said.

Ternary or triple oppositions, the contrasting of
three elements, also belong to the elementary actions
of the classificatory function of thought, and their
role in primitive thinking is also very great.

Formal logic usually explains ternary oppositions
as awareness of an intermediate link between a pair
of opposed elements, and the singling out of this link
as a third, independent element; the explanation, it
must be said, is rather strained, since it remains al¬
together unclear with it how and why the link be-

tween the elements itself was realised as an indepen¬
dent element equal to them, and not counterposed
to them both on the principle of an already estab¬
lished binary opposition. In rebelling against this
strained explanation (which also seems unconvincing
because awareness of the link between the opposed
elements appears to be a logical operation accessible
only to quite developed, sophisticated thought),
I would like to draw attention, to counterbalance
it, to the possible link of ternary oppositions with
the grammatical category of ‘person’. In the preced¬
ing chapter I already adduced certain considera¬
tions for the original form of speech having been
dialogic; in the course of speech there was an ex¬
change of information, not a unilateral transmission
of it. Monologue speech must have been associated
with the Neanderthal stage. That means that there
was a personification of the individual then and a first
awareness of the speaker’s Ego. But the Ego could
not be comprehended separately from awareness of
the independence of the person with whom the T
came into contact, and an opposing of him to all
other persons not involved in the contact at the giv¬
en moment. So the grammatical category of person
arose, and a differentiation of the world of objects
into the subject of action, the object to which the
subject was addressing himself/herself, and all other
objects.

Marr put forward several convincing arguments
for including personified forces of nature in this last
category in Indoeuropean languages, and interpret¬
ed such turns of speech as the French il fait chaud
(it is hot) or the German es regnet (it is raining)
from that angle as evidence of so-called ‘impersonal
phrases’ belonging to the third person. Subsequently
many other examples were adduced from languages
of other families, which all stressed the significance
of the category ‘him’ in primitive consciousness
(and could not help doing so), while the signifi¬
cance of the categories ‘I’ and ‘thou’ was realised
directly in dialogue.

In my opinion such a differentiation of objects,

247

things, and individuals’ relations by person led more
naturally to ternary oppositions and to generalisa¬
tion of a category of breakdown into three, as an uni¬
versal logical principle of classification, than (I re¬
peat) the artificial hypothesis of generalisation of a
suggested link of two elements as an independent ele¬
ment that automatically led to the origin of a triad.
It can be thought that ternary oppositions arose
among Neanderthaloids, in contrast to innate binary
ones, during the origin of the category of person in
language and consciousness. The genesis of element¬
ary oppositions in the sphere of empirical expe¬
rience, and in the sphere of generalisation of its re¬
sults, in which the principles of rational logic predom¬
inated (as I demonstrated above), was varied; these
mental structures were both genetically determined in
their origin and conditioned by the development of
language.

Such a formulation leads almost automatically
to the thesis that we have constants of sorts in the
psyche of primitive man of a broader character than
elementary oppositions. The material relevant to this
theme is so immense that it cannot be cursorily ana¬
lysed; there is the exceptionally rich memorials of Pa¬
laeolithic art, the stability of the shapes of tools,
the recurrence of their position and of the position
of sacrificed animals in Palaeolithic burials, and
much, much else. It seems to me that one should
nevertheless recall, in connection with this problem¬
atic (and precisely with the problem of elementary
psychological structures in primitive technique),
the results of the research of Marshack (1972) in the
USA, and of Frolov (1974) in the USSR, and also the
conclusions of Winn that I considered earlier when
analysing what can be called a tool.

Winn put the matter on fundamentally new lines,
and drew on concrete observations of the charac¬
teristic features of the morphology of Lower Palaeo¬
lithic stone tools in his reconstruction of the men¬
tal world and psychological features of primitive man.
He singled out, and specially analysed, characteris¬
tics in it that testify to the forming of very simple,

yet fundamental properties of the human psyche and
of the simplest forms of awareness of time and space
relations.

Winn wrote that it is difficult to discover the re¬
sults of logical, material thought in the archaeologic¬
al materials. That statement is justified in relation to
the Lower, and even Middle, Palaeolithic but, to an¬
ticipate, it is hardly justified in relation to Upper Pa¬
laeolithic times. There is a wide recurrence of numer¬
ical relations in the Upper Palaeolithic which already
provides grounds for a reconstruction of the first stages
in the development of logical-mathematical think¬
ing. The specific feature of the work of Marshack
and Frolov is that it stands at the junction of what
relates to the origin both of art and science. The par¬
adoxical nature of this is that both Marshack and
Frolov found a way to understanding the forming of
the simplest numerical relations in the psyche of Pa¬
laeolithic man (i.e. what reflects the rudiments of
logical, mathematical thinking and underlay mathe¬
matics), by employing specialised archaeological
material, viz., memorials of Palaeolithic art. It is not,
however, simply a matter of memorials of Palaeolith¬
ic art taken in the traditional research context, but
of a special approach to them developed precisely for
this case, which consists (a) in an evaluation of the
number and order of the recurring ornamental mo¬
tifs on sculptured images and pictures from early
sites, the number of repeated elements in material
articles (for example, ornaments, the most important
of which are necklaces), and (b) in an analysis of the
numerical structure and symbolic of Palaeolithic or¬
nament. All that called for coverage of the immense
literature on the subject, organisation of its data from
the appropriate angle (since information on the nu¬
merical symbolic in the Palaeolithic age is incomplete,
fragmentary, and still limited to separate uncon¬
nected observations), independent work on the col¬
lections of Palaeolithic tools and art objects in Euro¬
pean, American, and Soviet museums, and finally a
comparison of all these data with the still far from
full observations of the level of morphological de-

249

velopment of early Homo sapiens.

Very detailed study of the numerical symbolic
(in the first place of the best studied Palaeolithic
sites of Eurasia) made it possible to show convincing¬
ly that it points to the special significance only of
a certain series of numbers, i.e. 5, 7, and sometimes
3 in ornamental motifs of Upper Palaeolithic age.
At the same time the most common grouping of the
elements of ornament is in sets of four. The com¬
prehensive interpretation of these numerical relations
is based on broad use of ethnological data, the results
of psychological research, and the information avail¬
able on primitive art, burial rituals, and the ideolog¬
ical notions of Palaeolithic man. As a result Frolov
managed to demonstrate convincingly, by comparing
his observations with previous ethnological observa¬
tions of the significance of the four points of the
world, that the numbers 3 and 4 arise as the first stage
of counting through awareness of the most funda¬
mental properties of the world. As to the next pair
of uneven numbers—5 and 7—awareness of them
came about in connection with clinical and psycho¬
logical research that demonstrated the limited volume
of the human operative memory and its limit during
rapid remembering of events determined by the num¬
ber 7. If a man of modern culture has such a limit,
it was naturally maximum for primitive man, who
was limited in many cases, seemingly, to the number
5. Marshack no less convincingly, in my view, succeed¬
ed in interpreting the number symbolic of Upper
Palaeolithic art in the context of a hypothesis of the
existence of a definite calendar based on a cycle of a
seven-day week, i.e. again through the number seven.

Here, seemingly, I must say something about the
first steps in the accumulation of empirical knowl¬
edge, though they have no direct bearing on primitive
man’s mental structures. The range of empirical
knowledge of even the culturally most primitive
peoples of modern times is quite wide and is organised
by quite complicated classification systems. In
separate cases they are exceptionally detailed in some
one sphere of life, like, for example, the anat-

1

250

omical knowledge of the Aleuts (Laughlin, 1980).
The published observations on the character and vol¬
ume of fossil man’s notions in the field of the anat¬
omy of animals (Frolov, 1980) or of astronomy (Fro¬
lov, 1977), while extremely interesting in themselves,
are based on memorials of Upper Palaeolithic art,
and provide little idea of what the fossil men of the
Lower and Middle Palaeolithic knew.

I spoke above about the forming of consciousness
parallel with speech among Pithecanthropes, and of
the forming, consequently, of a sphere of empirical
experience and of generalisation of its results. Hunt¬
ing, food-gathering, orienting in a locality, use of rock
shelters, consciousness of the passage of time and of
the seasonal rhythms of natural processes were all, as
I have already written, undoubtedly very early achieve¬
ments of human thought, without which mankind
could not have survived even at the Pithecanthrope
stage.

A sequence of stages in the forming of the sim¬
plest logical structures can thus be noted from what I
have said. The beginning of tool use, which found re¬
flection in the Olduvai industry, when wood and bone
were used together with stone to fashion the sim¬
plest tools, was characterised (if one can so express
it) by preconsciousness, largely lacking in definite
structural relations. This level, which included con¬
sciousness of bilateral symmetry, and the conscious¬
ness of binary oppositions that arose on its basis, seem¬
ingly took shape over the course of this period, and
then, possibly, binary oppositions were genetically
consolidated. The Chellean period, which was char¬
acterised by full consciousness of the advantages of
flint as material for fashioning tools, and by the ori¬
gin of the speech function, may have added conscious¬
ness of unity, of singleness in opposition to division
into two on the principle of binary oppositions, and
of the whole in contrast to the parts. The moulding
of conscious spheres of empirical experience and
generalisation of its results, which chronologically
coincided with this stage (as I have tried to show),
vvas impossible without the genesis of categories of

251

singleness, and separateness, which subsequently de¬
veloped into the first member of the mathematical
series of prime numbers.

Parallel with forming of the category of person in
the language of Neanderthal man, three dual opposi¬
tes seemingly arose as logical awareness of a chain,
viz., the subject of action—the object of the action-
other objects. It may be supposed from certain facts
of linguistic analysis that the last category also in¬
cluded a personification of natural forces whose
action was already then realised as the expression of
some other world, of some sort of extrahuman pow¬
ers, i.e. of the law of alogical, irrational participa¬
tion (participation mystique). The alogical there¬
fore apparently arose later, historically, than the logic¬
al, the sphere of abstract thought later than the
spheres of empirical experience and generalisation of
its results. Finally, judging by the archaeological da¬
ta, the next uneven numbers of the series of prime
numbers (5 and 7) fall into the Upper Palaeolithic.
The thinking of the Upper Palaeolithic had already
reached quite a high level, so that it can be supposed
that operations with division into four and six arose
within it, in the simplest case as combinations of
elementary binary and trinary oppositions.

The Diffuseness and Concreteness of Primitive
Thought

The picture just reconstructed of the successive ori¬
gin of the separate links in the mathematical series of
prime numbers bares for us a kind of framework of
the logical constants that more and more organised
the thinking of fossil man in the course of the history
of primitive society and gradually increased its prac¬
tical effectiveness. But, in addition to the logical
structure of primitive thought and its continual per¬
fecting in the course of time, I must also note two
other features of it that stem from the factor discus¬
sed at the end of the preceding section, viz., the in¬
adequacy of fossil hominids’ concrete knowledge of

252

their physical environment and their difficulty of
orientating themselves in it (meaning, of course, not
mechanical shifting of place in physical space, but
orientation in the broad sense of the term), and the
undeveloped character of the sphere of abstract
thought. It is a matter, thus, of the Lower Palaeolith¬
ic (the Chellean and Acheulian epochs) and Middle
Palaeolithic (the Mousterian period). Throughout
this long period, which embraced evolution of the
genus Pithecanthropus and the Neanderthal species,
the two features of mental structures mentioned in
the title of this section took shape, viz., concreteness
and diffuseness of thought, amorphism, the interpe¬
netration of various concepts, and the vagueness of
their differentiation.

The hominids of the earlier Olduvai stage, Austra-
lopithecines, were characterised, as I have just said,
by an extremely amorphous preconsciousness, the
logical organising principle of which, seemingly, was
binary opposition. A system of the simplest concepts
was only crystallising out, as is witnessed by the un¬
stable forms of the Olduvan tools compared with the
stone industry of much later times. The discreteness
of the material world had evidently only just begun
to acquire outlines in inner images (by analogy with
the ‘inner speech’ of modern man), vague concepts,
so to say, that could not become real ones and be
clearly assigned to objects of the external world be¬
fore the origin of speech. Even though this is a specu¬
lative hypothesis it can be supposed that this dif¬
fuseness of concepts was partially retained in later
times, because the process of the forming of concepts
itself gave rise, parallel with their sound designa¬
tion, to a zone of indeterminacy and vagueness in
which the remaining phenomena of the psychic pro¬
cess, organised by trial and error, were manifested,
and also the next supposition, stemming from the
first, i.e. the absence of a firm link between the first
words taking shape and the nascent concepts, which
increased the sphere of indeterminacy and created a
confusion of concepts. Diffuse thought was not so
diffuse that its bearers could not live in a changing

253

world, multiply and reproduce a population, though
they had lost some of the instinctive acts peculiar to
animals; yet it was diffuse enough to limit their life
to very narrow confines and leave them only the pos¬
sibility of extremely slow progress, which is also
confirmed by facts. Both the sluggishness of
Palaeolithic psychological traditions and the slow¬
ness of the change in the early hominid’s physical fea¬
tures have been repeatedly demonstrated from the
most varied material. I must also recall that traces of
this diffuse thought and certain confusion of
concepts have been repeatedly recorded in one form
or another by all students of the culture of Upper
Palaeolithic men, and especially of their art; survi¬
vals of this confusion have also been noted in the
ideology of later societies of the Neolithic and Bron¬
ze ages. In other words, certain features of diffuse¬
ness in the mental sphere have seemingly been pre¬
served throughout the history of primitive society.

The diffuseness of mental structures would seem to
exclude the second feature, i.e. the concreteness of
thought. In fact, if we take concreteness as the anti¬
thesis of diffuseness, as a special concreteness of con¬
cepts and their vocal fixation, then it is excluded.
But I am not concerned with that; given the mono¬
tony of primitive man’s life he evidently fixed many
qualities of the objects around him exactly, to which
we do not now pay much attention and in many
cases do not even fix in language. It has become
common in the historical, ethnological literature to
affirm the exceptional wealth of the languages of
primitive peoples in concrete concepts with an ab¬
sence of general ones. A classic example, which has
been referred to many times, is the extreme diversi¬
ty of the stockbreeding vocabulary in the languages
of many peoples of a nomadic culture. But such a
wealth and variety of concrete vocabulary in no
way excludes the existence of general concepts, as
has been demonstrated by many studies. The pecu¬
liarity of the primitive languages of contemporary
peoples who are at a low level of social development
is not the absence of general concepts but the ab-

sence of general concepts in fields of language
that reflect spheres of life that do not enter their
life cycle.

A retrospective reconstruction is even less defi¬
nite here than in many of the preceding cases, but it
can be thought that this aspect of thought, reflect¬
ed by language, was strongly represented among the
extinct ancestors of modem man, viz., fossil homi-
nids; the point is the high concretisation of concepts
in the spheres of life that constituted the economic
and labour cycle of fossil hominids and that can be
thought, by analogy with modern languages, to have
found reflection also in the primitive vocabulary. I
would seem to be justified in imagining that fossil
hominids differentiated the constitution of animals
and their habits quite exactly in their conceptual
sphere and quite precisely designated them in the
speech function. Diffuseness as the general model
and concreteness in particular fields of the conceptual
apparatus and speech designation are the dialectical
unity that accompanied development of primitive
thought from its very beginning. It is very possible
that syncretism, i.e. description of a phenomenon by
comparison, so typical of Greek poetics (which has
something in common with the infinite variety of
definitions in folklore texts), was a survival in later
times of the concreteness, a legacy and vestige of an
earlier stage in the evolution of thought, charac¬
teristic of primitive times.

Individual Combinations of Psychic Properties

The problem of the typology of personality, of out¬
standing manifestations of certain properties of in¬
dividual personalities, the importance of brilliant per¬
sonalities in human history, the social conditioning
of the work of genius, the hereditary dependence of
talent have always been topical problems at all
stages of human history, and are still topical and en¬
gaging, Literature, art, and philosophy have always
considered them their own. The greatest thinkers

255

of various nations and of all ages have left many elo¬
quent pages that dealt with them sometimes strictly
scientifically, sometimes emphatically subjectively,
sometimes artistically. Man thus looked within him¬
self and discovered depths terrifying and attractive
to peer into.

Is the problem of human character only a feature
of the written history of humanity? Or does it go
chronologically no deeper than the history of man of
the modern type? Or does it go back to anthropo-
genesis? Did fossil archanthropes (Pithecanthropes
and Neanderthaloids) also differ from one another in
features of character, just as modern people differ?
Were the psychological traits of personality perhaps
even moulded in the same complexes that we guess,
at when looking at everyday life and human history,
rather than really single out on the basis of objective
facts from the infinite diversity of people’s features,
habits, inclinations, and life destinies? The descrip¬
tion of personality is too complicated. Heredity and
life’s lot are inextricably bound in it. Inimitable spir¬
itual movements, often incomprehensible, proper
only to it and it alone, manifest themselves in fancy.
Behaviour in situations of stress is unpredictably
personal, for one to obtain precise definitions of
psychological types, even employing modem equip¬
ment, and bring out the lines of their behaviour in
various life situations.

Credit for posing this question is due to the Soviet
anthropologist Y. Y. Roginsky (1969) who included
a chapter in his book on anthropogenesis entitled
‘On Types of Character and Their Significance for
the Theory of Anthropogenesis’. That chapter, writ¬
ten in the free form of a philosophical essay, was
exceptionally engaging; because of the intertwining
of the philosophical and scientific approach and of
literary and artistic analogies, it was stylistically rath¬
er complicated, but that was justified by the charac¬
ter of the problems dealt with and the way Rogin-
sky’s conception was set out. Its inspiration was that
the ‘age-old’ types of character he distinguished had
no bearing on anthropogenesis. The whole analysis of I

256

the behaviour of the bearers of these types was some¬
how synchronous; it was made within the context
of the history of modem men or Neoanthropes.
Roginsky did not always hold that view; in a paper
published at the beginning of his scientific career
(Roginsky, 1928), he defended a point of view on the
evolutionary significance of the main characterologi-
cal combinations, but later demonstrated their link
with motoricity and certain morphological attributes
(Roginsky, 1937), which were later confirmed by
subsequent research.

There is a certain contradiction in Roginsky’s treat¬
ment of the genesis of the age-old types of charac¬
ter he distinguished. He connected their genesis with
three most important manifestations of human cha¬
racter that had passed in their triunity, under various
names, through all European philosophy and many
Oriental systems, viz., will, reason, and feeling; in
his view they in turn guaranteed three most import¬
ant components of the human community that
have passed down the whole history of society, i.e.
production of the means of existence and tools,
struggle against the forces of nature, and co-opera¬
tion within human groups. The analogy was quite
straightforward, but obviously debatable. Will-pow¬
er and strength are needed for struggle, reason, for pro¬
duction, and emotion, love, and goodness for co-opera¬
tion. But it seems probable, the more so that Rogin¬
sky formulated his hypothesis of connections very
cautiously and dialectically richly, recalling all the
tendencies counteracting them, and also drawing
them into the analysis.

That, however, is not the point, which is rather
the legitimate question, stemming from the moulding
of the age-old components of mankind’s develop¬
ment, of why, if they were age-old, did they not man¬
ifest themselves in the history of primitive socie¬
ty. Furthermore, it is not necessary to put them into
the category of the age-old; one can simply ask wheth¬
er there was not production, struggle with the forces
of nature and enemies, and co-operation with fel¬
low-tribesmen in primitive society. An affirma-

17-294

257

tive answer is obvious; one can adduce many facts in
support of it from what I have said on earlier pages.
But since struggle, work, and co-operation were
age-old categories and also comprised the substance
of primitive history, as well as of the history of later ]
historical periods, there are no logical grounds for I
timing the origin of the types of character corres¬
ponding to these categories to later ages.

In point of fact, however little we know about the
inner life of local bands of Pithecanthropes and
Neanderthaloids, we do, all the same, know some¬
thing about them. I do not mean production, re¬
constructed in great fulness from the relics of ma¬
terial culture; the bearer of reason, the representative
of the intellectual type, could always find his place
in the production process, and in becoming the guard¬
ian of technological traditions (Roginsky himself
wrote about the image of the wise man or sage, that
runs through the whole of world literature), function¬
ed as an innovator, the inventor of new techniques
of working stone, wood, and bone, the interpreter
and forecaster of the seasonal change of natural pro¬
cesses, the connoisseur of the habits of animals, the ex¬
perienced teacher of the young in hunting skills and
knowledge of fashioning tools. Bloody or even just
serious clashes between bands were seemingly rare
events; in any case we do not find confirmation of
them either in the ethnographic descriptions of pre¬
sent-day backward peoples or in our knowledge about
fossil hominids; artificial damage to their skulls is not
so frequent for the widely held view of them as the
result of fights with a fatal outcome to be considered
convincing. But struggle with predators, leading roles
in hunting, opposition to the forces of nature, the
possibility and impossibility of making and leading
long migrations remained; and they might have be¬
come conduits for the development of a determined t
character and realisation of its positive sides in the
life cycle. It is very probable that a strengthening of
these qualities went along with the moulding of
Pithecanthropes from archanthropes, that the devel¬
opment of an increasingly stable social organisation

258

(and of its underlying psychological prerequisites)
constituted the dominant trend in the process of
anthropogenesis. The third component of the triad-
emotion, love, and solidarity—could also find ex¬
pression and probably did, within the context of this
forming social medium. It can thus be thought that
all three manifestations of the characterological
typology were linked from the beginning in its ge¬
nesis with the forming of the earliest stage of con¬
sciousness and consequently accompanied the whole
history of the subfamily of hominids, men proper.

The reality of the existence of three types of cha¬
racter-wilful or resolute, intellectual, and emotional,
from at least the Lower Palaeolithic, is also confirm¬
ed by observations of a biological order that respond
to the historical, genetic considerations cited. There
are remote analogies to the three types enumerated
in the higher nervous activity of animals. Aggres¬
sive individuals or, on the contrary, ones that tend to
maintain contact, are popular concepts among all
those who constantly have to do with either wild or
domesticated animals. It would seem difficult, or
even impossible, to find a zoopsychological analo¬
gy of the intellectual type (for all the relative nature
and conditionality of these analogies), but compari¬
son of the separate individuals and their behaviour
described in the literature help us find a suitable
example, and one, moreover, close to man, name¬
ly the chimpanzee. The nice, likeable, but limited
Ioni in Ladygina-Kots’ research, and Kohler’s Sul¬
tan, almost a genius in solving the problems set him,
form a broad range of variations of mental capa¬
bilities in chimpanzees. That fact, incidentally, is
exceptionally important and is not given due weight
in comparative psychology. It demonstrates how sig¬
nificantly, sometimes, a mentally developed indi¬
vidual differs from one with a low level of mental
capacities. Hence, too, the possibility of uniting
various kinds of observations that lead to the con¬
clusion that the course of the evolution of hominids
before the appearance of man of the modem type
was not the exception in the history of humankind,

17 *

259

and was also not accompanied with uniformity in
the manifestation of psychic properties but rather
with a quite definitely expressed diversity.

Can we consider that the typological diversity of
fossil men’s psychic traits is exhausted by the types
enumerated? Of course, there are no direct data for a
definite answer to that question, but certain indirect
considerations enable me to answer it in the negative.
The observed correspondence of the constitutional
schemes of domestic animals and men has not, so
far, attracted much attention and has still not been
fully explained. When we compare the most factual¬
ly substantiated, theoretically analysed, and detailed
constitution descriptions of domestic animals (they
all, incidentally, belong to Russian scientists:
E. A. Bogdanov, 1923, P. N. Kuleshov, 1926, and
A. A. Maligonov, 1968) with those of human con¬
stitutional features offered in countless quantity,
but similar in many features, the similarity be¬
tween them is distinctly visible. Even in the ab¬
sence of facts on the constitution of wild animals
(which would present exceptional theoretical in¬
terest) this coincidence is in itself sufficient to suggest
a similar constitutional typology for fossil hominids.
The available research data make it possible to single
out two independent, hereditarily determined com¬
ponents whose combinations in varieties are consti¬
tutional types: (a) a factor of longitudinal growth,
determining size; and (b) a factor of basic metabo¬
lism determining bulk, i.e. the chief characteristic fea¬
tures that strike one when appraising any living crea¬
ture, be it a wild beast, a domesticated animal, or
man. Earlier, when substantiating the classification
of hominids, I grouped together all the known forms
of Australopithecines in two genera differing in de¬
gree of massiveness. And, although they differed in
many other important respects besides, one cannot
wholly rule out the idea that we have encountered
two opposite tendencies here in the shaping of con¬
stitutional forms.

I needed my excursus into comparative study of
constitutions (which has not yet, unfortunately,

260

yielded a general theory of form-formation at the
level of the whole organism, long needed in evolution¬
ary biology) because certain dependences have al¬
ready been demonstrated that are manifested among
an individual’s psychoneural and morphological traits,
in particular certain differences between represen¬
tatives of an athletic constitution (large, massive
people) and of an asthenic one (small, midget people).
Their different psychic characteristics include quick¬
ness, sensitivity, and strength of the nervous proces¬
ses (the last two parameters are inversely correlated;
the sensitivity of the nervous system being lower the
greater the strength of the system itself).

The diversity of temperaments (for which no gener¬
ally accepted classification has been proposed, but
which are covered in part by the properties of the
nervous system listed), multiplied by the characte-
rological combinations that Roginsky called age-old,
and whose role in groups of fossil hominids was dis¬
cussed above, and finally by the concrete socio-psy-
chological types that could not have helped taking
shape within separate bands in spite of the already
mentioned uniformity of the life cycle and mode of
life, should already have generated a great variety of
individual psychological combinations at the dawn
of hominids’ history. A full typology still has to be
developed, though it is not very clear how it is to
be done; for the time being the only roads for it are
based on indirect data. But it is seemingly justifi¬
able to say that this diversity, though quantitatively
less probable than in societies of Homo sapiens,
was adequate to ensure some, though at first very
slow, progress.

‘We and They’ or the Ethnic Factor

The main question discussed in this section is whether
the consciousness of the primitive man who lived in the
Palaeolithic included consciousness of his isolation
from other people, or whether it was a group con¬
sciousness and had an ethnic colouring. At first

261

glance this question seems strangely put; when one
speaks of “peoples of antiquity’ later ethnic forma¬
tions are clearly meant, the ethnic categories of the
age of civilisation and class society (Egyptians, Su¬
merians, Hittites, etc.). But their place in the his¬
torical record and the one they occupy in our con¬
sciousness are easily explained; they had writing and
left a variety of political documents, household ac¬
counts, art, and, finally, descriptions of their neigh¬
bours. But do we have to link the rise of a historical
category like a people with writing? For many peo¬
ples of the Ancient East and antiquity are known to us
only from reports in the written memorials of neigh¬
bouring peoples. In primitive times, before the ap¬
pearance of the first state formations (since a written
culture was not an indispensable marker of a people’s
real existence), peoples could consequently have exist¬
ed who sank into unwritten oblivion without leaving
any historical memorials of themselves. Several eth¬
nographic studies of peoples at a very low level of
social development analyse the relations between
tribes from the angle of the ethnic factor. The sepa¬
rate tribes are united in groups of related tribes, and
even phenomena of ethnic consolidation are ob¬
served; in short there are microprocesses similar to
the large-scale phenomena typical of highly developed
nations and civilisations.

It may seem strange to talk about peoples (nations)
in primitive society, let alone at the dawn of pri¬
mordial history, since traditions of habit and custom
link them with relatively late periods of history. Cat¬
egories like nation and nationality are categories of
class society; nation is even a category of capitalist
and socialist societies. How, then, can one speak of
peoples (nations) of primitive times, and even more
of early primitive times, irrevocably past and eth-
nographically not reconstructable?

The different ethnographic schools and trends sug¬
gest various ways of reconstructing the sequence of
events in the history of primitive society by
employing ethnographic data about modern societies,
but these techniques do not yield full results. The one

most common today among Soviet specialists is the
book on the theory of ethnos written by J. V. Brom¬
ley (1972). The theory of ethnos was developed
synchronously, and the system (synchronously full
in its author’s opinion) was extrapolated to the pro¬
cesses of the ethnic dynamic. The forms of ethnici¬
ty, however, especially in the historical section, were
not fully studied. It is very likely that future,
objectively organised research will discover, if not
new forms, then significant gradations in the devel¬
opment of old ones; that is nearly indisputable as
regards the early phases of the formation of ethnic
groups. The concept of consolidation lacks any quan¬
titative description. In short, the ground has not been
adequately prepared for this approach to the ethnic
situation. Only the first stage of this dynamic inter¬
ests me here, and one can say of it that clan and tri¬
bal groups, which are often treated as chronologically
successive as ethnic groups, are in fact linked by
much more varied and intricate, sooner synchronous,
relations.

There are no direct data for reconstructing ethni¬
city in the bands of fossil hominids, of course. Giv¬
en the natural vagueness of the course of ethnic dif¬
ferentiation in the early stages, there are even few¬
er indirect facts than for reconstructing all other
psychological features. I specially stress that ethni¬
city belongs to the psychological sphere in primitive
society; it was ethnic consciousness that gave the
initial impulse to the formation of peoples though,
in their further development and in the highest de¬
grees of consolidation, the material characteristics of
an ethnos (common territory, language, economic
and cultural ties, etc.) acquired an immense, perhaps
decisive role (the concept of consolidation must be
employed despite the indeterminacy of its content,
since it signifies very important aspects of the ethnic
processes). It is very probable that an opposing of
themselves to others and a consciousness of this op¬
position were the basis on which the group psycho¬
logy took shape. This opposition has been the object
of special analysis in the literature as one of the main

263

concepts in the system of social psychology. But I
am inclined to think that analysis of this concept
solely in the system of social psychology does not ex¬
haust its substance and that in the early stage of hu¬
man history the opposition of themselves to others,
the alternative Sve and they’, went beyond the limits
of the separate groups and expressed a consciousness
of certain differences between the members of one
group and those of all other groups, primarily neigh¬
bouring ones.

The first argument in favour of this point of view
lies, in my opinion, in the obvious fact that there was
no social stratification in the composition of any
group of ancient hominids and consequently blood
relationship and consciousness of that kinship put
all members of the band in an equal position in that
regard. The second argument is that common habits
and techniques of hunting and food-gathering, con¬
solidated precisely within a given band, the psycho¬
logical ‘lapping’ of all its members during intimate
household life, the practice of working stone and
fashioning tools by traditional, established tech¬
niques, a common language and full mutual linguis¬
tic understanding, indentical extralinguistic behaviour
in the spheres in which it was preserved, and finally
a certain sum total of rudiments of knowledge, all
constituted the psychological basis of a feeling that
was seemingly dominant in the primitive bands of the
earliest hominids and enabled each to perceive the
others as people exactly like themselves.

It can be assumed that linguistic differentiation
had a big role in this process. As soon as the speech
function took shape (and arguments were adduced
above that it happened at the Pithecanthropine stage
in conditions of relative, perhaps even consid¬
erable, isolation of the bands creating language),
differences began to take shape in the phonetic com-
plection of the flow of speech and word creation,
which made mutual intercourse difficult (these differ¬
ences initially embraced separate bands; whether a
few or even a very large number, it is difficult to say,
though a median variant seems most probable from

264

the modern geography of languages and dialects),
and erected a powerful barrier to penetration of
bearers of other languages and even dialects into se¬
parate groups or combinations of groups. The iso¬
lation of the separate groups, and more probably
of aggregates of them, seemingly became greater
after the formation of linguistic differences, and re¬
mained at one and the same level until the develop¬
ment of many social institutions within which lan¬
guage barriers were already overcome in a system of
other, more developed social relations.

Another important conclusion stemming from this
is that linguistic differences could not help playing
an essential, perhaps determinant role in the integ¬
ration of bands that were embraced by a single sys¬
tem of language communication. There seem to be
grounds for suggesting that a phenomenon of inte¬
gration rather than differentiation may have taken
place first within such small combinations of pri¬
mordial bands in the early stage of primitive society,
because of the language barrier and its consolidation
during the inner development of language. That in¬
tegration was initially expressed in cultural commu¬
nion between groups using a common language or
dialect being not only less difficult but even pro¬
voked by the common linguistic affiliation. A much
larger number of people would have been drawn into
the process of intercourse than within a small popu¬
lation, and that would have accelerated cultural and
economic development in a definite direction, to
some extent perhaps accidental, inherent precisely
within a given combination of primitive bands. Each
language can therefore be regarded as an ethnos-form¬
ing factor right from its beginning. I must add that
after the formation of various languages covering sev¬
eral groups, a psychological feeling of community
must have been preserved in a modified form in re¬
lation to members of neighbouring groups as well.
But as soon as there was a limit to the spread of a
language, that feeling would naturally have been lost,
since linguistic misunderstanding, not to mention
complete incomprehension, would have beome an

L

265

insurmountable barrier for all the outward similari¬
ty and blunted the feeling of community with other I
tribes. Its place would have been taken by another
feeling, that of communion with others, with
members of some other group of unlike people. Con¬
sciousness of similarity within a linguistic commu¬
nity (‘we’ on the one hand) and consciousness of dif¬
ferences (‘they’ on the other hand) would simul¬
taneously have cemented a band or a group of bands
internally and consolidated their opposition to out¬
siders (both the similarity and the difference would
seemingly have been realised differently: the simi¬
larity as full similarity in everything, and the dif¬
ference primarily in language). The psychological
factor, i.e. the psyche of the group, and the psycho¬
logy of group behaviour, would have assumed an
ethnic form from the earliest stages of its formation,
and, like language, would have been stimuli and ac¬
companying phenomena of ethnos formation. Chro¬
nologically that may be dated (in accordance with
everything said above) to the Pithecanthropine stage.

6

ON THE FORMATION OF SOCIAL RELATIONS

The Sense and Scope of the Concept

Historical materialism defines social relations clearly,
stressing the primacy of social production in this re¬
gard, and its exceptional role in the moulding of all
social institutions; social relations are ones that peo¬
ple enter into in the course of production, i.e. are
production relations plus the relations entered into
during the interaction of social groups. The rela¬
tive poverty and uniformity of the life cycle in prim¬
itive times often remarked on (in our preceding pages
as well) somehow not only excluded the forma¬
tion of any social stratification whatsoever but also
ruled out creation of the preconditions for its rise,
so that it can be supposed that social relations were
reduced only to production ones in primitive society
and consequently functioned exclusively in the form
of relations within the production process. But re¬
lations of production always entail some form or
other of social organisation in general.

In the preface to the first German edition of The
Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,
published in Zurich in 1884, Frederick Engels quite
rightly stressed the dual character of the production
and reproduction of society’s life, which breaks
down into production of the material bases of life
and reproduction of the people themselves. Through¬
out the book he put forward many-sided arguments
for this initial thesis, which has since become firm¬
ly established in historical science, and determi¬
nes the interest among materialistically thinking
scholars in study, parallel with the production pro-

267

cess, of kinship relations in primitive society, which
more and more took on a social aspect.

For decades the production process and kinship
relations were in fact studied in parallel, since it seemed
obvious that they coincided, that is to say that
kinship groups (for example, the family and clan)
functioned as an economic group. Later, however,
quite a lot of material was gathered about the back¬
ward societies in New Guinea and Australia that be¬
gan to go beyond the framework of this orderly but
rigid approach. This material indicated that the role
of the family was quite weak in the economic process,
and that the clan community by no means always
functioned as an economic nucleus. The long discus¬
sion in the journal Sovetskaya etnografiya around
the facts available did not, strictly speaking, lead to
an unambiguous solution, the adherents of traditional
views and the ‘innovators’ having stuck to their opi¬
nions ;but that turned out to be the point of the dis¬
cussion. The data on the non-coincidence of socio¬
production and kinship associations were not refut¬
ed, and the discussion consequently demonstrated it
to be possible to interpret the early stages of devel¬
opment of social organisation by a hypothesis of a
multiple approach rather than a single one, i.e. within
the context of views on the local character of the
coincidence or non-coincidence of the scope of a
production group with a family or clan. Pershitz’
very convincing arguments (1970) for the coinci¬
dence of kinship and production relations were
indisputable as regards modem backward peoples
and individual societies of Mesolithic times (he
drew on information about the Mesolithic popula¬
tion of North Africa), but it remained unclear how
far they had a universal character and could be ex¬
trapolated to the earliest levels of development of
social organisation.

The bearing of the whole discussion on my theme
is that it clearly demonstrated that social relations in
primitive society were far from limited simply to rela¬
tions of production but included relations of kinship
as a potent component. The latter, as many studies of

268

the historical materials of later times show, retain a
considerable role in class society as well, but at the
dawn of the development of history they were fac¬
tors largely determining the behaviour of the individ¬
ual. Groups of related people functioned as really
operative forces in relation to each other. So, in this
chapter, when I speak of the moulding of the first
forms of social ties in the early stage of human socie¬
ty, I shall also be talking primarily about the cha¬
racter of kinship relations, the more so that such
phenomena as the family, clan, exogamy (funda¬
mentally studied for Upper Palaeolithic and later
periods) express various forms precisely of blood re¬
lationship, which is a direct consequence of sexual re¬
production (which predominates in the animal king¬
dom). Blood relationship takes on various forms in
communities of animals, including anthropoid apes,
depending on the forms of sexual reproduction.
There are very probably analogies of some sort between
the social links that arose within bands of the ear¬
liest hominids in the forms of behaviour associated
with sexual reproduction, child-bearing, and rearing
of infants, and in general with the sex-age structure
of animal communities. (I have devoted a special pa¬
per to this matter [Alexeev, 1980], entitled ‘On
Biological Phenomena Important for Reconstructing
the Initial States of Certain Social Institutions’).

Biological Prerequisites

The origin of the early forms of social organisation
is a problem with a central place in the science of
primitive society. These early forms are directly re¬
corded only in contemporary, ethnographically back¬
ward societies that have already travelled a long road
of historical development, and are accordingly known
to us in vestigial form. To reconstruct the sources,
factors in the forming, and stages in the development
of early forms of social relations therefore calls for
analysis of the archaeological materials as well as the
ethnographic data, and for drawing on data of the

269

palaeoanthropology of the Palaeolithic age, etc. Im¬
mense work has already been done in that respect,
but many matters are still not sufficiently clear and
necessitate further research. In that connection inter¬
est in the ethological or behavioural data on prima¬
tes, which are of undoubted interest for the compar¬
ative genesis of social institutions, has greatly quick¬
ened in the last twenty years or so. The literature
on this question provides a more or less full idea of
what has been done in this field and indicates the
fruitfulness of drawing analogies between the group
behaviour of primates (especially of anthropoid
apes) and the earliest forms of the group behaviour
of the oldest hominids.

The intensive ethological research of recent years
has thrown three circumstances into quite clear re¬
lief. The first is that ideas about the exceptional ag¬
gressiveness of the males in troops of apes, their ac¬
tive struggle for females, and as a consequence an
extreme degree of ‘zoological individualism’ (ideas
that have often been employed by ethnographers
when trying to reconstruct the first stages of the form¬
ing of the primitive horde), are proving unsuitable
as a basis for that reconstruction because of their lack
of correspondence to the actual state of affairs. The
second point is the abundance and importance of the
latest information on the troop behaviour of various
groups of apes, which brings out the diversity of their
group behaviour and the lability of the troop forms
of behaviour thus formed, and the variety of hierar¬
chical and other forms, and not just sexual relations,
in their shaping. Finally, the third point is the discov¬
ery of certain elements in the group behaviour of
primates, resembling certain elements, by remote ana¬
logy, in various forms of social organisation (a ten¬
dency to mate within a single generation expressed
among the males of many species; a tendency to mate
with females of other groups). It is now already
impossible not to allow for the very important source
of information presented by data on the ethology
of primates for reconstructing the elementary forms
of social relations in the primitive horde. The editors

270

of Sovetskaya etnografiya rightly pointed out in an
editorial ‘the absence of interdiscipline co-ordination
of research into this problematic’, after a discussion
held on this problem, and called for ‘complex study
of the stages of the forming of social organisation’
(1974,5: 128).

It is of interest to trace how this discussion arose
and developed. The initiator was L. A. Fainberg
(1974) whose article was essentially a conspectus of
a book published later (1980). K. E. Fabri (1974)
reproached him during the discussion for having paid
much attention to evidence of the peaceful charac¬
ter of the relations between individuals in troops of
apes. In Fabri’s view that did not need demonstrat¬
ing since one could only speak of a marked expres¬
sion of zoological individualism in apes from the old,
outdated research of S. Puckerman (1932), i.e. when
little was known about the life of animals, and in par¬
ticular about anthropoid apes. That idea is now con¬
tradicted by everything we know about the group
relations of animals since the burgeoning of etholo¬
gy; in fact it can be rejected, though the tradition
dies hard. The many-sided behaviour of animals be¬
gan to be studied in natural conditions rather than in
experiments at the beginning of the 50s (see, for
example, the symposium Behaviour and Evolution,
1958). The flow of works on the behaviour of prima¬
tes can be dated from the early 60s, and still contin¬
ues (see, for example. Biosocial Anthropology,
1975, and R. H. Turtle [Ed.] Socioecology and Psy¬
chology of Primates, 1975). Fainberg justly noted in
his reply to his opponents, including Fabri, that the
latest ethological information published in special
zoological works either remained quite unknown to
ethologists or was only selectively known to them.
An obvious overestimation of the role of zoological
individualism was therefore typical of much of the
work, even of recent times, on reconstructing the
initial stages of the development of social relations.
In any case the curbing of zoological individualism
is sometimes taken as a main social function of social
institutions in the initial stages of their rise and de-

271

velopment, if not the sole one. Overestimation of its
role inevitably leads logically to overestimation of
the social significance of sex taboos. Sex relations in
the primitive horde are treated as a moment constant¬
ly promoting the rise of conflict situations and inter¬
fering with labour activity. The commonly held hy¬
pothesis of the origin of exogamy stems from this
last point, as a main factor, and is circumstantially
supported by comparative data on many primitive
peoples (Tolstov, 1935). It was formulated in the
American literature by Seligman (1950) and Sahlins
(1960) apparently independently of the Soviet work.
The physiological restructuring that led to constant
sexual activity of man’s ancestors compared with
other mammals is often cited in evidence. But in
anthropoid apes the sexual cycle is not expressed
nearly as markedly as in other mammals (see, for
example, Kummer, 1971; Alexeeva, 1977). If we
add that the ethnographic examples of various sex¬
ual taboos relate to already comparatively developed
societies and that they always have a magical char¬
acter, then it is highly conjectural whether one can
directly extrapolate the data about customs of sex
taboos to the relations of the sexes in the primae¬
val horde.

Along with the exceptional quickening of interest
in ethological primatology, it is often said that all
the information on the troop life of apes (and even of
the highest of them, the anthropomorphic prima¬
tes) has no significance (or only limited significance)
for reconstructing primitive social organisation be¬
cause it belongs to biology, while social organisation,
i.e. sociogenesis, lies on the whole outside the boun¬
daries of the operation of biological laws. The second
part of this assertion is, in my view, correct, but is
that sufficient grounds for considering the first part
justified, which postulates the impossibility, or very
limited possibility, of extrapolating data on the group
behaviour of primates to relations between individ¬
uals within the primordial horde? I am inclined to
doubt that, and cite as evidence the epistemological
proposition, important for a Marxist methodology,

that there is a hierarchy of laws in both animate and
inanimate nature, each law embracing some field
of phenomena but being incorporated at a higher
hierarchical level within the sphere of operation of
a more general law. Any ascent from the lower to
the higher is inconceivable without preservation of
a certain degree of continuity, and is a further devel¬
opment, already at a higher level, of individual pro¬
perties or qualities of the preceding stage. Lenin’s
statement that negation is to be understood ‘as a
moment of connection, as a moment of develop¬
ment, retaining the positive’* is of fundamental im¬
portance for the problem under consideration. The
laws of dialectics are general laws of nature and are
manifested in regularities of development in both
animate nature and society. What fundamental laws
of the animate are displayed in transformed form in
the life of human society, and how that transforma¬
tion comes about in the initial stage of its develop¬
ment, can only be appraised through the prism of
these laws. In that connection Novak’s series of theo¬
retical studies (1967, 1975, 1978) present great in¬
terest; in them he endeavoured to trace the source of
social forms of behaviour, starting with the lowest
forms and ending with man.

How were the relations between individuals within
the biological groups, in this case within communi¬
ties of primates, transformed back in the initial stage
of sociogenesis? For all the autonomy of develop¬
ment of the psyche from the stages of morphophy-
siological evolution, there is a certain parallelism,
as I have already remarked, between the stages of
morphophysiological progress and the tempos of the
rise in level of psychic development in the animal
kingdom. It was not for nothing that Severtsev
(1947), author of the fullest and most carefully ar¬
gued theory of morphophysiological progress, devot¬
ed a special work to the evolutionary perfecting of
the psychic functions parallel with morphophysio-

*See Lenin’s conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic. Philosophical
Notebooks. Collected Works , Vol. 38, Progress Publishers, Moscow,
1980, p. 225.

18-294

273

logical evolution. The higher psychic development of
anthropoid apes compared with the less organised
members of the order has been demonstrated by
many comparative experiments. The very great mor¬
phological closeness of the chimpanzee and gorilla
to man, of all members of the animal kingdom now
extant, also raises no doubts. Both these circumstan¬
ces give the available information on the group life of
these two species a special place when we want to use
it to understand the group relationships that pre¬
dominated in communities of the forms that gave rise
to the human branch of evolution.

Of all the reports on the behaviour of the gorilla
and chimpanzee the observations of Schaller and Em-
len on the group relations of mountain gorillas
(Schaller, 1963; Schaller and Emlen, 1963) and those
of Jane van Lawick-Goodall (1971) on analogous
relations among chimpanzees merit special atten¬
tion for their fulness and thoroughness. For all the
difference in their ecology, their group behaviour is
largely similar. Bands of gorillas most often consist
of ten to fifteen individuals of both sexes, and dif¬
ferent ages. There is a certain hierarchical charac¬
ter to the position of the separate individuals within
the band. This position is little dependent on the size
and strength of the individual and is determined by
some other factors. The system of dominance is ex¬
hibited in all spheres of life except sexual relations,
yet even in the latter appreciable conflicts do not
arise. Conflicts are exceptionally rare in general, and
very seldom finish up in fights; as a rule they are
settled peacefully, the individual occupying the
lower place in the system of dominance yielding in
most cases to the one whose place is higher. The re¬
lations of dominance are not constant or permanent,
but are subject to change; that, however, is not ex¬
pressed in sharp, open clashes.

The fact that gorillas are temperamentally quiet
peaceful animals also deserves attention; chimpan¬
zees are more excitable, but the difference between
the species in that respect is not great. One may add,
as regards chimpanzees, that small bands of ten or

274

fifteen individuals sometimes constitute elements
of a bigger community, which may be as large as 80
individuds in some cases. These communities
have an open character, i.e. some of the individuals
pass from them to other communities, and they
accept separate individuals from other groups; at the
same time, however, they also display a certain
stability.

That general conclusion perhaps needs to be de¬
scribed in greater detail. Most of those who have ob¬
served chimpanzees in the wild have noticed a certain
order in the composition of their associations and
have distinguished separate structural elements. The
numbers of the communities vary from 30 to 70
or 80 individuals, but their members relate different¬
ly to members of the same community and to individ¬
uals from other ones (Hamburg, 1970). In the latter
case a clearly expressed aggression can be observed.
The differences in behaviour of communities inhabit¬
ing wooded regions and semi-open localities are
extremely interesting (Itani, 1977; Itani, Suzuki,
1967); in the forest their organisation is quite free,
while in the savanna a clear order of trooping is re¬
corded (females with young, males, females without
offspring, and young animals), certain relations of dom¬
inance, and so on. Relations alter within one and
the same community when it moves from savanna to
forest and vice versa. It should be noted that ‘forest’
and ‘savanna’ animals behave differently, as well, in
experimental conditions; the first are frightened of
carnivores in neighbouring cages; the latter exhibit a
certain aggression toward them (Kortlandt, 1962;
Chance, Jolly, 1970). Have we a model here of the
beginning of anthropogenesis and the transition from
forest to savanna? As for the structural units within
communities, temporary groups are clearly seen con¬
sisting of males and females without offspring, on
the one hand, and of females with offspring and one
or two males on the other hand. All observers una¬
nimously note the peaceful relations in communi¬
ties, the absence of conflicts in competition for a
female, and the involvement in sexual relations of

18 '

275

those males with a very low place in the system of
domination.

Direct extrapolation of the data on modem anthro¬
poid primates to the oldest groups of man’s ances¬
tors (as already mentioned several times) is not of
course legitimate. But these data must be taken into
account in a reconstruction of the group life of
Australopithecines, archanthropes, and palaeoan-
thropes. The references to be met, to the existence of
damage to the skulls of fossil men inflicted by weap¬
ons, alter the substance of the matter little; they are
not very frequent, as already noted. The damage
could perhaps be the consequence of episodic clashes
between different hordes of primitive man, rather
than of conflicts within them. Such clashes are rare
between groups of anthropoid apes, but do take
place. In the oldest human groups they could have
had a rather sharper character because of the exis¬
tence of tools, which could easily have changed their
purpose and been used as weapons of attack and de¬
fence. At the same time we must continually remem¬
ber such fundamental facts (for the matter under
discussion) as the existence of a strongly expressed
intravital exostosis (growth of bone tissue) on the
hip bone of a specimen called Pithecanthropus I,
and traces of the artificial amputation during life of
the forearm of the Neanderthal man Shanidar I.
Could these individuals have survived if mutual aid
had not prevailed in bands of the earliest hominids?
It is difficult in principle to imagine otherwise, the
more so that mutual help occurs widely, as we al¬
ready know, in animal communities. Apes are not an
exception; baboons, for example, wait for lagging
animals in certain conditions during the movement
of a troop (Rowell, 1967). Chimpanzees readily share
meat with other members of the band after a hunt
(Teleki, 1973). The earliest ancestors of man were
thus evidently much more peaceful creatures than
was thought not so long ago, and as they were depict¬
ed in many works on the history of primitive socie¬
ty. If that is so, can the rise of social relations be re¬
garded as a control placed by the nascent society on

276

clashes between separate individuals fatal in their
consequences? Obviously it cannot; their functional
role then was seemingly different and consisted rather
in regulating relationships among members of the
group during labour.

I need to stress specially, perhaps for all the dia¬
lectic of the forming of social relations, and the marked
awareness of a qualitative difference in the group
behaviour of animals, and the group relationships of
the earliest men, that we nevertheless have to draw
that conclusion since we would otherwise run up a
logical cul-de-sac. Not having ethological grounds for
speaking of developed zoological individualism in
communities of man’s closest ancestors, I am forced
of necessity, while keeping to the hypothesis of
zoological individualism, to postulate its rise at the
threshold of human history together with and within
the first forms of the primaeval human horde. What
can explain such a paradoxical phenomenon? I do
not see any causes. The evidence of allegedly intra¬
horde conflicts (as I said above) can easily be explained
by separate clashes between groups, though such,
it must be thought, were rare. There are also the facts
mentioned above that witness to mutual help within
the group. In all those conditions, the hypothesis of
zoological individualism is contradiction to the
direct observations and at the same time brings us no
nearer to an understanding and causal explanation of
the first stages of the forming of social organisation
in the early stages of anthropogenesis, and is there¬
fore superfluous.

The relatively peaceful character of relationships
within the simian troop can thus seemingly be extra¬
polated to the early stage of anthropogenesis. What
are the other ethological features of the higher pri¬
mates, on whose soil the first shoots of emerging
social relations could have grown in the group beha¬
viour of the earliest human ancestors? In this connec¬
tion I must draw attention to the fundamental bio¬
logical properties of the relationship of the sexes in
the organic world, discovered by the comparative
physiological research of recent years. The role of

277

sexual reproduction in evolution, and the signific¬
ance of each of the sexes in the transmission of the
biological traits of each generation, are the subject of
an immense literature in which many factual obser¬
vations and theoretical analyses of the problem have
been amassed. On the background of the preceding
knowledge, however, the latest studies carried out
with various groups of animals and later generalised
in a theory of the transmission of biological infor¬
mation through sexual reproduction contain many
additional results.

This research has indicated that the rate of re¬
production of any species is governed, within the lim¬
its of its biological possibilities, by information
flows (whose nature is not yet wholly clear) that
influence animals’ sexual activity via reflexes, and
finely control the numbers of the species and the
relations of the sexes in accordance with favour¬
able or unfavourable factors of the environment. The
different role of the male and female sexes in main¬
taining species homeostasis has been brought out.
The female sex embodies the stable element in evo¬
lution, and stabilising selection obviously operates
primarily through it, consolidating species traits and
ensuring a maximum of species adaptation to the
environment. The male sex has the function of the
mobile element and, seemingly, through transmission
of the already consolidated male features to the next
generation, effects an extension of the norm of reac¬
tion and creates a field for intervention and opera¬
tion of motive forms of selection.

All these observations and conclusions, reflecting
fundamental and general biological laws and patterns,
have a direct bearing on my theme as, one must
think, they had not ceased to operate at the dawn of
the forming of social relations, since they reflect
deep features of the sexual reproduction of animals,
and possibly of plants. Some traits of the group be¬
haviour of anthropoid apes in natural conditions can
be regarded as concrete expression of these general,
deep features.

They include, above all, the exceptional mobili-

278

ty of the male part of the band compared with the
females, frequent passage of males from one band to
another, and in that connection their very labile
position in the ‘pecking order’ within each band.
These phenomena have been recorded by direct ob¬
servation of such ecologically varied species as mar¬
mosets (Cartlan, Brain, 1968), baboons (Fox, 1967;
Rowell, 1967), gorillas (Schaller, 1963), and chim¬
panzees (Goodall, 1965; van Lawick-Goodall, 1971;
W. Reynolds, F. Reynolds, 1965; Hani, Suzuki,
1967), The reverse is also observed among the higher
primates (chimpanzees and gorillas), i.e. a migration
of females from troop to troop with a stability of
males (Harcourt, 1978). The phenomena noted do
not form a general trend in the order of primates,
but it must be recognised, all the same, that the ten¬
dency is quite common. I cannot, of course, affirm
its existence directly in bands of Australopithecines
or early archanthropes, but if we base ourselves on
the view developed above of its reflection of a funda¬
mental law and of the dialectical retention of these
laws in transmuted form at a higher level of the so¬
cial movement of matter, would it not be logical to
presume that it was this tendency that constituted
the starting point from which many actual social
phenomena took shape later, including the exten¬
sion of sexual relations outside the group, the off¬
springs’ living with the mother for a long time, etc.?
There are neither theoretical nor actual premises
for denying such a starting point.

Another feature important for my theme catches
one’s attention in the ape band, namely the rarity of
sexual relations between members of different ge¬
nerations. That has been confirmed by the long liv¬
ing of children with the mother recorded by direct
observation among chimpanzees (van Lawick-Good¬
all, 1967), macaques (Sade, 1968) and baboons
(W. Reynolds, 1968), and even more the limited char¬
acter of the ecological niches, and consequently the
intensive struggle for existence and the high infant
mortality and low expectation of life caused by it.
Even with a high birth rate, each female as a rule

279

has only a very small number of offspring surviving
to adulthood, and has often herself already died by
that time or become very old. Even with the possi¬
bility of sexual relations with descendants, however,
there is a certain behavioural tendency to avoidance
of an unconditioned reflex character that stands in
the way. While I have no chance of judging this phe¬
nomenon among ancient hominids (i.e. whether or
not such an avoidance existed), I must nevertheless
recall the low expectation of life of Australopithe-
cines (Mann, 1975), and archanthropes (Vallois,
1937; Weidenreich, 1939). There are thus factual
grounds for suggesting that there was a low proba¬
bility of sexual encounters among members of dif¬
ferent generations as well in the oldest primordial
bands of early hominids. That conclusion allows me
once again to oppose the various hypotheses of
promiscuity (no limited relations between the sexes)
and a blood-related family that have figured in recon¬
structions of the first stage of the shaping of social
organisation and are still sometimes employed.

I thus arrive at the conclusion that the starting
point in the community of higher primates providing
a basis for hominids was marked by a relatively peace¬
ful character of the relationships within the com¬
munity, a relative stability of the female part, and
mobility of the male part in the sphere of sexual re¬
lations, and finally by rare cases of sexual relations
between members of different generations. With the
forming of social relations during the transition to
labour these biological features of the initial state
served as the substratum on which certain social
institutions later took shape. Such, it seems to
me, is the dialectic of the interaction of the biolog¬
ical and social in the establishing of social relations
at the initial stage of anthropogenesis. Later, as la¬
bour activity was perfected and the tasks it constant¬
ly set the nascent society of creating a more flexi¬
ble and effective system of social relations, and also
of a communicative apparatus, the initial biological
features of group behaviour could have taken shape in
various ways. It is very probable that the banishing

of males from the band by the dominant male played
a considerable role, and also the low probability of
their return to the same band as leaders, and final¬
ly the same low probability of clashes in the strug¬
gle for first place among males of different genera¬
tions. I must add that the operation of such mechan¬
isms of creating the preconditions for exogamy pre¬
supposes as the starting point consolidation of a band
headed by a strong male; there is nothing improba¬
ble in that suggestion. On the contrary, however, the
transition to preying on animals and hunting could
not have helped leading among man’s ancestors to
consolidation of the band, and consolidation of the
position of the biggest and strongest leader. A harem
organisation of the early form of the primordial band
seems thus really to have existed. It could have aris¬
en as a new formation with the transition to purpo¬
sive, regular hunting, although such a form of orga¬
nisation of simian communities is more pronounced
among lower apes than among higher ones.

Yet another circumstance must be recalled, which
follows from the conclusion set out above about the
exchange of genes between separate bands as a con¬
sequence of the mobility of males and their involve¬
ment in the process of sexual reproduction in various
bands, which clashes, strictly speaking, with one re¬
servation. Any species is confined to a certain ecolog¬
ical niche, but within the confines of that niche it
does not usually have a continuous geographical
range; its range is discrete, as many workers have point¬
ed out, and confined to a certain geocoenosis. The
point of the differentiation of species into popula¬
tions, which are differentiated to the level of sub¬
species when there is a significant predominance of
the motive form of selection compared with the sta¬
bilising form, consists in such a discrete spread (i.e.
of the so-called geographical species formation, pre¬
dominantly characteristic of all mammals). Compar¬
ative morphology and evolutionary studies have de¬
monstrated that a species evolves most quickly when
it is broken up into populations between which, how¬
ever, there is to some extent an exchange of genes.

Combining these evolutionary schemes with the
actual material on the group behaviour of primates,
above all of higher ones, taking place before our eyes,
I can add another distinguishing feature to those of
the initial state, namely, that the mobility of the
males was displayed within the limits of a group of
communities rather than in an unlimited way, i.e.
communities confined to a certain part of the coun¬
try and forming a population in the evolutionary sense.
It can thus be thought that there were two trends,
one to sexual relations outside the communities, ef¬
fected by males, and restriction within the group of
communities, imposed by the habitat of the species
and following from the resultant intermittent spread.
Among the oldest ancestors of men there were po¬
pulations distinguished by a tendency to endogamous
sexual relations. It is difficult, however, to imagine
that the isolation of those populations was complete
and all the more consolidated by some system of sex¬
ual or production taboos (there are no data that
would permit me to speak of a developed system of
taboos in the early stage of development of the pri¬
mordial human band; on the contrary, I spoke above
of the comparatively late origin of various taboos).
Unstable contacts between populations could have
maintained the exchange of genes at certain level
promoting progressive evolution. The tendency to
sexual relations outside the limits of the individ¬
ual bands in a population was seemingly gradually
consolidated, by virtue of the circumstances just con¬
sidered. And on the whole one must see some weak
prototype of future endogamous tribes with their
component exogamous clans in such a system of re¬
lations. But around two million years passed from the
appearance of the first hominids to the formation of
man of the modem type, until this immense pro¬
gress was made in the sphere of social relations.

The Dynamics of the Primordial Band

In most of the works on the history of primitive so¬
ciety the whole of that vast period of the history of

282

hominids is designated as the period of the primor¬
dial band or horde, concretisation of which as a so¬
cial institution has still advanced little, unfortunate¬
ly, while the ideas about it remain very general. It
is difficult, however, to refrain from trying to pic¬
ture the dynamics of social relations in the primor¬
dial band, beginning with Australopithecines and
ending with Neanderthals. There are almost no con¬
crete data for that; and we can reconstruct the pro¬
cess solely by relying on its initial and final stages.
The initial stage was outlined above; the final one,
in accordance with the most common theory was the
clan or gentile system, which took shape in the Up¬
per Palaeolithic. The strengthening of the tendency
toward sexual relations in other bands, and later their
institutionalisation, and the complete banning of mar¬
riages between individuals belonging to different
generations, consolidation of long-lasting, permanent
contacts between a mother and all her children, and
the transfer of the biological links between them to
a sphere of consciousness of kinship were seemingly
the main substance and basic tendencies of this tran¬
sitional period. A full analysis of it is a special, ma¬
jor theme, and I shall touch on it solely in connec¬
tion with an attempt to reconstruct the dynamics of
the primordial band in time, because it is a priori
obvious that there must have been an accumulation
of certain progressive shifts over two million years,
for all the stagnation of life in primordial society and
the slowness of the historical changes.

Starting in practice from that a priori obvious idea
in my previous works, I have distinguished two stages
in the history of the primordial band. The first
embraces Australopithecines and Pithecanthropes and
was characterised by a very primitive level of social
relations, a semi-wandering way of life, and very
simple forms of labour. The second stage is correlat¬
ed in time with Neanderthal men and is marked by
a complicating of the forms of labour, a settled way
of life, and development of rudimentary ideolog¬
ical ideas. The description, as we see, is not very con¬
crete but it is impossible to give a more concrete

283

one. There are some grounds now for introducing a
change into the proposed periodisation, and to single
out three stages rather than two in the chronologi¬
cal dynamic of the primordial horde, which, as pic¬
tured from the historical standpoint, demonstrates in
a more striking way the evolution of social relations
among ancient hominids before the appearance of
Homo sapiens.

The first stage is that of Australopithecines.
Among them, I would recall, there was no speech and
apparently no developed conceptual thinking; inter¬
course or communion was predominantly effected, as
with animals, by communicative vocalisation. Very
primitive tools were fashioned from stone, and pos¬
sibly from wood and bone. Food-gathering and a
very simple form of hunting were practised. It is
difficult to see how, in that situation, the relations in
a population could differ fundamentally from the
troop relations of gorillas and chimpanzees. The dif¬
ferences, if there were any, were probably quanti¬
tative. The sole thing that one can say is that the
tendencies noted above of a predominant avoid¬
ance of sexual relations between members of different
generations, and of a mobility of the male part of
the primordial horde with a relative stability of the
female part, were manifested in these relations.

The second stage is that of Pithecanthropes or
archanthropes. Speech and language were arising in
the form of a dialogue exchange of word-sentences;
parallel with them conceptual thinking was develop¬
ing with spheres of empirical experience and gene¬
ralisation of its results. All that served labour, which
was becoming more complicated, ensured the fashion¬
ing of tools of definite shapes and the possibility
of drive-hunting of large animals. The constant main¬
tenance of fire before means of making it were in¬
vented, it must be thought, was an embryo of eco¬
nomic specialisation; it could be maintained by
physically less able or elderly individuals. Aware¬
ness of blood relationship in the maternal line prob¬
ably also belongs to this stage, in which it differs
from the preceding one; in other words, the actually

284

existing blood kinship expressed among primates and
Australopithecines and reflected in conditioned-re¬
flex forms of behaviour (perhaps even to some extent
associated with purely physiological uncondi¬
tioned-reflex acts), for the first time passed into the
sphere of consciousness and had already become an
organising principle through that in group behaviour.

The third stage is that of Neanderthaloids. Every¬
thing said about the great complexity of the material
and spiritual culture of Neanderthaloids fully permits
the idea that the rudiments of clan organisation took
shape then. Concretely that could have been expressed
in an institutionalisation of the sexual relations of
the male individuals outside the group, which must
ultimately have led to a transition of social relations
to a clan form.

It is possible, seemingly, to say with a sufficient
degree of reality, that these three stages in the
development of the primordial horde were the path
of the progressive complicating of social relations
which finished with the formation of a clan, if not in
all the collective nuclei of the early representatives of
modem mankind, at least in many of them.

THE GENESIS OF THE ANTHROPOGEOCOENOSIS

About Economic-Cultural Types

The first question that must seemingly be exam¬
ined when passing to the problem of the origin of
anthropogeocoenoses is that of the concept ‘econom¬
ic-cultural type’, already used in a general form for
over five decades in the Soviet ethnographic literature.
It was formulated by S. P. Tolstov (1932) in a work
which was not specially concerned with problems
of cultural typology, and therefore did not have a
developed base for it. The concept was consider¬
ably developed and concretised by M. G. Levin and
N. N. Cheboksarov (1955), who showed how to use
it to analyse and classify according to type elements
of the culture of different nations. All elements that
arose during people’s adaptation to their geographi¬
cal environment, and as a response to, and interconnec¬
tion with it, were included in the concept. According
to the definition given by Levin and Cheboksarov
economic-culture types are a historically formed com¬
plex of economy and culture typical for peoples of dif¬
ferent origin living, however, in similar geographical
conditions and being roughly at an identical level of
historical development. In other words, similar comp¬
lexes of material culture arose in similar natural condi¬
tions among peoples who were at one level of socio¬
economic development but were different in origin
and often separated by thousands of kilometres of
land and ocean. Man’s economic activity, of all the
phenomena of culture, is linked to the maximum
with the geographical environment, so that its trends
have been called economic-cultural types in depen-

dence on the connections with the environment
plus the phenomena of culture accompanying eco¬
nomic activity. Concrete examples of these types
are the Arctic hunters of marine fauna, the hunter-
gatherers of the tropical forests of South America,
Africa, and South-East Asia, and the hunters and fish¬
ers of the valleys of big rivers, the herdsmen of the
steppes and semi-deserts of Central Asia, etc. Each
of these types embraces peoples of different origin.
The hunters of marine fauna are Eskimos, Aleuts,
Chukchi, and in part Koryaks; the hunter-gatherers
of the tropical forest are the Bantu-speaking peoples
of Central Africa, and the Semangs of the Malacca
Peninsula who speak Australonesian languages. The
herdsmen of the steppes and semi-deserts of Central
Asia include peoples of the Turkic and Mongolian
linguistic families, and so on. The forming of a
similar economy among different peoples, and of the
complexes of cultural elements depending on it,
was as I have already said, the result of a parallel
development in similar natural conditions.

A world scheme of the typology of economic-
cultural types has now been suggested, based on that
approach, maps of their distribution over the world
have been published, and hypotheses of their dynam¬
ic in time have been developed. Study of the whole
diversity of cultures from the angle of their grouping
by economic-cultural types, it can be said, is one of
the most common ways of developing a cultural typ¬
ology and has a major place in the present-day Soviet
ethnographic literature. That determines the signific¬
ance of quests for the methodological sources of the
hypothesis of economic-cultural types and the work
of tracing the development it has undergone with
time. Although Levin and Cheboksarov quite justifi¬
ably pointed to Tolstov as the pioneer of the concept
of economic-cultural type, neither he himself, nor
A. M. Zolotarev and A. P. Okladnikov who were
working parallel with him and are mentioned by
Levin and Cheboksarov in their paper, used the term.
It was first brought into the literature, it seems,
in a paper published by Levin in 1947 on reconstruct-

287

ing the historical dynamic of economic-cultural
types in Siberia, in which he suggested a first experi¬
ment in regional typology of economic-cultural
types and a scheme of economic-cultural regionalisa-
tion of Siberia. Levin and Cheboksarov’s paper put
several other examples of concrete economic-cultural
types in the northern areas of North America and in
central and eastern regions of Europe into scientific
circulation. The next stage in the development of a
local typology of these types was the joint work of
the Chinese ethnographer Lin Yao-hua and Chebok-
sarov (1960), the results of which were twice repub¬
lished by Cheboksarov (in English in 1965 and in
German in 1966). It gave a circumstantial outline
of the economic-cultural regionalisation of China;
in addition, however, it had a methodological signific¬
ance of its own in study of this problem, as it drew
attention for the first time to elements of spiritual
culture directly linked with the character of the
economic activity, i. e. certain rites and rituals,
customs, beliefs, and folklore that could, in the
authors’ view, be included in the description of
economic-cultural types, and proposed a triple
division of them by time of origin and level of com¬
plexity of the economic activity: stage I—an appro¬
priation economy; stage II—rudimentary forms of
a production economy; stage III—developed forms
of a production economy. In essence it is this period-
isation that has been developed in detail to examine
the dynamic of economic-cultural types in the course
of human history. Finally, a world repertory of
economic-cultural types was compiled, and a map
of the distribution of types in the fifteenth century
(i. e. at the time of the great geographical discoveries
and intensive European colonisation) compiled by
L. A. Fadeev and Y. V. Chesnov, was published (Chebo¬
ksarov, Cheboksarova, 1971), and also a map of their
distribution at the turn to this century, compiled by
B. V. Andrianov (Andrianov, Cheboksarov, 1972).

How does this sum total of ideas (developed over
a half-century by Soviet ethnographers) relate to
the problem of the localness of cultural phenomena

that world ethnographic science was theoretically
aware of at the turn of the century? The distinguish¬
ing of ‘cultural circles’, which at first evoked a wave
of enthusiasm in European science, later revealed
its limitations which were expressed in a narrow¬
ness of view about them as combinations of cultural
elements, immobile in time and not evolving. As for
the hypothesis of cultural areas developed mainly by
American ethnographers, it of course assumed inde¬
pendence of the cultural elements; the idea of the
isolation of the most significant elements of culture
was foreign to this hypothesis, but the local grouping
of uniform variants in type of cultural elements made
it possible to single out zones of coincidence and
concentration of some of them and to appraise local
variants of culture as a whole by them. Many features
of the culture of various peoples conditioned by
adaptation to a similar geographical environment
were directly pointed out in some of the works of that
trend. In the articles of Andrianov and Cheboksarov
there were many criticisms (some justified and some
not quite so) of the adherents of this trend of ethno¬
graphic thought, but they did not reject the obvious
continuity of the hypotheses of economic-cultural
types and cultural areas. This fact should not, of
course, obscure the novelty of the idea of geograph¬
ically determined complexes of cultural elements asso¬
ciated with the hypothesis of economic-cultural types.

Returning, after all that, to the concept of these
types, I must stress that it is now impossible to rely
on it without singling out from it certain primary
units that form it. To do so, however, it is necessary
first of all to demonstrate that they do objectively
exist. And in that connection the concept of these
types calls first of all for far-reaching systems analy¬
sis; it is necessary to comprehend the boundaries and
total of all the ideas relating to it critically, and clear¬
ly demarcate them, and in the first place to answer
what an economic-cultural type is as a whole. Is it
a system, open or closed? Are certain structural
elements distinguishable in it? Are they organised
on the principle of a hierarchy? Or perhaps no

19 294

289

elements can be singled out in it in general and it
is a structureless whole? These questions have un¬
fortunately not been asked in the literature on theo¬
retical ethnology, or have largely remained unan¬
swered. The fundamental feature of any system, of
course, is the dependence of its structure and func¬
tional organisation on any of the elements compos¬
ing it and, on the contrary, its influence on the in¬
dividual element. From that angle evaluation of an
economic-cultural type makes one greatly doubt
whether one can see a system in it. The inclusion
of several peoples in single economic-cultural type
(of which I have already cited examples), and the
existence of several ethnic boundaries within it,
lead to the conclusion that a type is somehow differ¬
entiated at the ethnic level, and make it possible to
suggest that this differentiation may also have a
systematic character. But such a suggestion would
only be justified if the separate peoples were depen¬
dent on one another in their economic activity. But
they are generally relatively autonomous, especially
in the early stages of human history when intertribal
and interethnic exchange had a place which, though
significant, was by no means basic, and in any case
did not determine a people’s viability. Opposite
examples, the economic-cultural relations between,
say, the nomads of the steppes and semi-deserts and
the oases settlers are the case of dependence of the
bearers of different economic-cultural types.

With relative economic autonomy of the separate
peoples or ethnic groups belonging to the same
economic-cultural type, it is natural and obvious
that the number of the peoples, and in general in¬
dependent ethnic units, embraced by it, matters
little for its development as a whole. The specific
nature of the nomadic societies of Central Asia
is not governed by whether they were just Mongols
in the recent past, or just Buryats, or some other
people. In other words differentiation of all the
bearers of a given economic-cultural type by ethnic
contours does not create the specific structure
within the type and, consequently, the type itself

cannot be regarded as a system and natural combina¬
tion of ethnic elements, hierarchically co-ordinated.
There is no sign of any other differentiation except
an ethnic one within a type; in any case it does
not lie on the surface. If an economic-cultural type
is not a system, perhaps it is a structureless amorphous
whole? My further exposition is directed to show¬
ing that it is not, that certain elementary autonom¬
ous units or nuclei are distinguishable within a type,
but that they do not form a complexly structured
hierarchy and are put into one type or another by
similarity. In other words a type is not a totality
of these elementary units, or a system, but is a set
or aggregate, or a sum of them, each of which pre¬
serves a considerable autonomy from the others.
These units may be many or few; that affects only
the type’s size characteristics but not its inner qualit¬
ative ones. My colleague E. G. Yudin (1975) has
been critical of the possibility of regarding the inner
structure of an economic-cultural type within
the context of the trichotomous opposition (system,
aggregate, or structureless, amorphous whole) not
subject to further differentiation. He is undoubted¬
ly right from the methodological view; the concepts
of a system and an aggregate often overlap. But
the absence of terminological rigorousness in this
case is redeemed by the clarity of the arguments
and the obviousness of the conclusion. It could be
said, of course, that an economic type is a system
formed by an aggregate of homogeneous elements;
that would be irreproachable terminologically but
it is complicated and therefore hardly necessary.
The sum, the simple sum of not interconnected
elements, in essence very accurately defines the
kernel of the matter.

In concluding this section I am again faced with
a question, rather unexpectedly after all I have
said, of how far an economic-cultural type is real,
and how real is cultural convergence itself, condi¬
tioned by cultural-geographical adaptation and lead¬
ing to the formation of externally similar combina¬
tions of cultural features (to which the concept of

19 *

291

a whole is given in the hypothesis of economic-
cultural types). It is not an easy question to answer
since the typology of these types so far available is
very general and inoperational as it is accepted to
say in the theory of systems, cybernetics, and certain
other allied sciences, which implies a vagueness in the
description and indeterminacy of the content given
it. The parameters put into the characteristics of an
economic-cultural type by ethnographers usually
lend themselves to quantitative calculation with
difficulty; in any case (as far as I know) this calcula¬
tion has not once been made.

The path of quantitative totting up of the main
characteristics of any one of these types can be
speculatively represented in principle as follows:
the total number of people working panecumenical-
ly within one type or another; the productivity
of their labour; the total population belonging to
the type; and possibly something else, and as a re¬
sult, the obtaining of certain general energy indices
for the whole type and the opportunity of comparing
them with similar indices for other types. But such
a comparison, I must say at once, gives rise to many
questions for which there is now no visible answer;
it can be anticipated in advance, however, that with
recalculation per unit (working member of the eco¬
nomic group) we would get an increase in the labour
productivity and effectiveness of the whole economic
system compared with economic-cultural types of
the appropriation and production stages, but that
conclusion is absolutely trivial and without interest.
The total energy balance (energy input and output)
of any economic-cultural type is obviously deter¬
mined within the whole of humankind by the number
of people on the planet carrying on a certain econ¬
omy, i. e. by factors of a historical and demograph¬
ic order lying outside the limits of the phenomenon
under consideration.

The laborious work of gathering the data listed
above is thus unpromising in advance; economic-
cultural types seemingly really do exist, though the
more mankind’s economic-cultural activity develops.

the more it breaks loose from the geographical en¬
vironment. The economic-cultural types of hunters,
fishers, and gatherers are apparently more definite
than those of herdsmen and especially of agricultur¬
alists. We must therefore examine them all as a whole,
as tendencies in mankind’s economic-cultural activity
whose geographic determination calls for special,
quite rigorous evidence in each separate case. It is
useful to treat these tendencies as a possible instru¬
ment of typological classification, but the existing
appraisals of their significance as one of the most
fundamental parameters of the economic-cultural
differentiation of mankind seem exaggerated.

In that connection it is not without interest to
touch on the matter of the genesis of an economic-
cultural type. Andrianov (1981), to whom the hypo¬
thesis of these types owes much as regards both its
development and its transfer to the geographical
map, writes literally as follows:

In all the territory of the primitive ecumene, right down
to the period of the Neolithic revolution (beginning
12 000 to 10 000 y. a.), one ECT (economic-cultural
type- V. A.) had been developing, or rather a group of
closely related types: (1) Arctic hunters; (2) tundra and
taiga hunters; (3) mountain hunters; (4) hunters of the
steppes; (5) hunters of the plains, savanna, and forests;
(6) hunters of the steppes and foothills; (7) hunters and
food-gatherers of deserts; (8) hunters and gatherers of
tropical and subtropical forests and humid savannas.

Strictly speaking, that quotation listed quite differ¬
ent types of economy, unitable in their all being var¬
ious forms of hunting. Hunting marine animals in
the Arctic has little in common as regards its tech¬
niques with, say, the hunting of large animals in the
central regions of Africa. From my point of view,
the second part of the quotation therefore contra¬
dicts the first. But if we orient ourselves on the first
part, which has most relation to the theme being
discussed, and precisely on the assertion about a
single type of ECT throughout the Palaeolithic,
then that understanding of the concept of econom¬
ic-cultural type merges in general with the concept

293

of the economic activity of mankind in its early
stages. What then is its heuristic value? It seems
that the genetic view of economic-cultural typology
is thus not capable of clearing up the questions
that arise in connection with it, as with the classific-
atory scheme.

Anthropogeocoenosis as an Elementary Cell
of the Primitive Economy and Its Structure

The results of the research and inquiries of the past
thirty or forty years are more and more bringing
out the complexity of humankind’s population
structure. By populations I mean groups of people
in human collectives separated from other similar
groups by marriage taboos. In other words marriages
are concluded more often within these groups than
between members of different groups. When such a
situation persists over many generations, the group
acquires a certain genetic uniformity and becomes
homogeneous. Populations are actually existing
groups of people united by blood kinship; they differ
in size, closeness of the blood relationships between
their members, and character of their relationships
with other populations. The population history
of humankind is obviously no less complicated than
its ethnic history and by many parameters we are
only at the start of studying it.

It naturally becomes a question of the relation
of a population to a people or nation, a question of
whether separate populations form part of the com¬
munities we call peoples, whether peoples have a po¬
pulation structure, and whether population and
ethnic boundaries overlap. The complexity of the
question predetermines the ambiguity of the answer.
On the one hand separate populations have a place
within any people or ethnos as a component of it.
On the other hand attempts have been made to show
that a people (nation) itself may become transformed
into an immense population in certain circumstances
(length of existence and endogamous marriages),

294

i. e. become biologically homogeneous (Bromley,
1969). In theory that can happen, but in practice
it never does, and cannot; if we recall Haldane’s
calculations (1935) about the rate of homogenisa¬
tion of a population for even one gene, it becomes
clear that the time needed for that and the length
of the existence of peoples are incommensurate;
homogenisation requires several tens of thousands
of generations.

In order to appreciate quite fully the real para¬
meters of separate populations and the population
structure of humankind as a whole, it goes without
saying, we can employ only data on the present-day
populations, transferring them to ancient popula¬
tions with certain reservations. But there are no direct
facts on the dynamics of humankind’s population
structure since the beginning of its origin, since that
structure is not reflected either in the relics of the
materia] culture of ancient societies or in the other
information available about them. The element
of extrapolation is particularly great when we pass
from a modem or nearly modem population struc¬
ture to that of Palaeolithic mankind. Populations
usually have a compact distribution and are represent¬
ed by separate settlements or groups of same. Given
endogamy, i. e. conclusion of marriages only or
mainly within a group, that is in fact obvious (in
the Pamirs and Daghestan, for example, each village
was endogamous, i. e. was an autonomous unit of
population structure within which only marriages
were made). Separate cases of departure from very
strict endogamy do not alter the matter; a village
or a group of villages remains a population even with
separate divergences from endogamy. But even when
a certain population structure is not so clearly main¬
tained and there are no substantial premises for its
taking shape in the form of endogamy, and there are
no impassable geographical barriers, the inhabitants
of a village or group of nearby villages usually poten¬
tially form a population. Marriages within villages,
or between members of adjoining villages, constitute
more than 80 per cent even on the East European

295

plain at the present time; it was obviously even
higher in the past.

The inhabitants of a village or of a group of close-
lying villages, however, are not only already an estab¬
lished or potential population but also an economic
group linked by a whole set of labour operations,
seasonal character of work, etc. This group occupies
a definite territory in accordance with the number
of its able-bodied members and the character of
its economy and has a constant transforming effect
on it. The reduction of forests with the clearing of
land, the change in vegetation, soils, and hydrolog¬
ical regime with irrigation, the damage to meadows
by grazing cattle, and finally the draining of marshes
and the ploughing up of long-fallow lands, on the one
hand, and the destruction of natural biogeocoenoses
and soil erosion caused by intensive forms of agri¬
culture, on the other, are a far from full list of
what creates the cultivated landscapes whose study
is now an important part of physical geography.
When an economic collective is examined not in
itself but in combination with the settling of a terri¬
tory and the sum total of its effects on that area, an
analogy between it and the biogeocoenosis can be
noted. In both cases it is a matter of structural
elements further undecomposable, the basis of whose
viability is constituted by the living community and
microenvironment, and the interaction between them.

The difference in principle between an economic
collective and a community of animals is that the
former exerts an active transforming influence on
the environment. This symbiosis of the collective
and the area settled by it, and also the collective it¬
self in combination with the exploited area at various
stages of human history, can be called an anthropo-
geocoenosis (Alexeev, 1975). This term seemingly
does not raise objections because of the analogy with
biogeocoenosis; at the same time it successfully
reflects the whole complex of the phenomena con¬
tained in it. It is very probable that it is anthro-
pogeocoenoses that are the elementary components
from which mankind’s economic activity was built

296

up. In fact, an economic collective is delimited in
its production activity from other groups, and its
numbers and productivity have a special degree of
effect on the environment, an effect that is limited
by geographical bounds of the exploited territory.
There is consequently a structural complex of rela¬
tionships among the phenomena themselves, a set
that is autonomous from other such complexes,
yet at the same time similar to them in the character
of the relationship of the economic and natural
factors. Apparently, anthropogeocoenoses merge into
what is taken as an economic-cultural type, accord¬
ing to the character of the interaction of the econom¬
ic activity and the microenvironment. When we
speak of an economic-cultural type of hunters of
marine fauna, for example, the inhabitants of the
independent camps can be considered examples of
separate anthropogeocoenoses; among the mediaeval
inhabitants of Mongolia (members of the type of
nomadic herdsmen of the deserts and semi-deserts
of Central Asia) anthropogeocoenoses were formed
by the separate tribal groups together with the
lands roamed, and so on.

It is possible that it was anthropogeocoenoses
that formed the intricate hierarchy of components
whose existence would still enable an economic-
cultural type to be considered a system? In the light
of what I have said above this seems improbable.
There are no concrete facts that would attest to the
existence of anthropogeocoenoses of different levels
of hierarchy, and to the possibility of subdividing
them into groups differing markedly in size within
one economic-cultural type, and of including several
smaller ones in bigger ones. The known cases of the
uniting of small economic collectives into one are not
typical since they are usually seasonal in character
and even associated with temporary changes in the
direction of economic activity. The vast Ipiutak
Eskimo camp on Point Hope in Alaska,, dating from
the first centuries A. D., is good evidence of that;
it consisted of several hundred houses, and the popula¬
tion numbered more than 3000. The character of the

297

culture and the archaeological observations of the
temporary occupation of the dwellings attest to the
Eskimos having been caribou hunters who lived in
small groups in the interior of Alaska and came down
to the coast only at a certain time of the year and
united to hunt whales (intensive hunting of which
could alone temporarily feed this big population in
the severe conditions of the Arctic). Separate cases
of the uniting of economic collectives of Australian
aborigenes have been noted in the literature, again
temporary and for certain special purposes. In gener¬
al the separate economic collective (and with it,
the anthropogeocoenosis) is quite a stable phenom¬
enon. Anthropogeocoenoses are linked with one anoth¬
er linearly on the principle of geographical vicinity,
and not on the principle of hierarchical subordination.

Returning to the question posed at the beginning
of this section, about the correlation of anthropo¬
geocoenoses and populations, and leaving a detailed
answer to it until later, I would only note that the
answer is decided wholly by the correlation of
economic collectives and populations. If a popula¬
tion comprises an economic group, it is it that forms
the structural component of the anthropogeocoenosis,
but if the economic collective is broader or narrower
than the population, then the boundaries of the
anthropogeocoenosis do not coincide with those
of the population. In general it can be said that an
anthropogeocoenosis is formed in most cases by an
economic collective, but a population takes its place
and forms part of the structure of anthropogeo¬
coenoses only when it itself functions as an indepen¬
dent economic group. This rare case can be illustrated
by anthropogeocoenoses in Daghestan, where villages
(by virtue of the predominance of a custom of
endogamy) usually figured as populations and at the
same time were independent economic groups.

The main structural components of an anthropo¬
geocoenosis named above is the economic collective,
as a demographic whole, its production activity, and
the territory it exploits. Each of these components,
however, forms a hierarchical structure that is broken

298

down in turn into several subsidiary units that play
a certain role in the general structure and function¬
ing of the anthropogeocoenosis as a whole. All these
components are therefore structurally quite intricate
in themselves. A certain numerical size is proper for
each economic collective. In the social organisations
of agriculturalists it may attain many thousands in
connection with their relatively high productivity;
in herdsmen societies, and especially in hunting
ones, the number of members falls to a few score.
Two indices of size play a significant role in the sys¬
tem of an anthropogeocoenosis—(a) the numerical
size of the whole economic collective, or the number
of people taking part in consumption of the product
of labour, and (b) the numbers of the healthy adult
population directly engaged in labour processes.
Members of the older generation are bearers of labour
experience but do not themselves, as a rule, take a
significant part in the work processes. The optimum
character of the age pyramid, i. e. the optimum ratio
of members of various ages, with the expectation
of life characteristic of the given case, is an indicator
of a favourable demographic situation in the group
promoting its prosperity.

Numerous morphophysiological, genetic, and eco¬
logical observations of the populations of the world
have indicated that they do not differ markedly
in their food requirements, which would be genetic¬
ally determined. In other words, the differences in
food regime between the population, say, of the trop¬
ics and of the Arctic, huge in both its composition
and its calorie value are not genetic, and may in fact
be almost wholly (some part of the local peculiarity
always falls to the share of tradition) attributed to
a difference in requirements owing to different
environments, and explained by the need to maintain
a definite level of energy metabolism in conditions
of hunger, for example. The individual variations
in food needs that undoubtedly existed have not
been well studied; it seems very probable, however,
that they largely depended on habit and were not
genetically conditioned. All that suggests that the

299

total effect of the needs of a given economic collec¬
tive, compared with others living in the same condi¬
tions, is practically wholly determined by its num¬
bers and demographic structure (the existence of
age differences in food needs is obvious), and con¬
sequently is reduced to the two factors about which
I have spoken, i. e. its total numbers and the number
of able-bodied members of the group (the biological
nature of the separate individual in otherwise equal
conditions has no influence on the role of the eco¬
nomic collective in the anthropogeocoenosis).

The thesis about the primacy of the productive
forces in social production is fair enough, too, of
course, for anthropogeocoenoses, but those of one
economic-cultural type are in general at the same or
close levels of the productive forces. Two structural
components can be distinguished in this produc¬
tion activity, namely: (a) the sum total of the produc¬
tion operations, i. e. skills and traditions, and con¬
solidated experience of preceding generations pooled
in the given group; and (b) labour productivity, i. e.
the intensity of the performance of the labour opera¬
tions, which also depends more on the group’s tradi¬
tions than on the individual morphophysiological
features of the individuals composing it. The second
component is especially fair for early, comparatively
weakly differentiated forms of labour activity. Both
these components determine the specific nature of
the economy in the first place, and its direction,
especially in agricultural anthropogeocoenoses, and
its specialisation.

The situation, at first glance difficult to explain
historically, when an economic collective in ancient
society often overtook others in its development and
began to play a dominant role, can be reduced, it
seems to me, to a difference in the intensiveness
of the invention of new production operations and
in the productivity of labour. It is often said, during
discussion of the role of economic activity as a struc¬
tural component of an anthropogeocoenosis, that eco¬
nomic or production activity expresses functional
links within the anthropogeocoenosis, and this activ-

ity represents the channel within it along which the
functional links between the geographical medium
(concretely, the territory exploited) and the social
nucleus, i. e. the economic collective, are realised.
Formally, perhaps, that is true, but production activ¬
ity is exceptionally intricate, and its forms many-
sided, and it is in production activity that a surplus
product is formed. When 1 considered the structure
of labour earlier, I discussed separately (following
Karl Marx) the concepts of the object of labour,
i. e. the material and object on which labour is ex¬
pended, the means or instrument of labour, and
the labour itself. Labour, i.e. labour operations, is
one of the three main components of labour activ¬
ity, although in certain conditions it can also be
appraised as the transmission channel of energy
impulses from the means of labour to the object
of labour; it depends on the point of view. I think
that, in the case of the structure of an anthropogeo-
coenosis discussed above, the exceptional importance
of production activity within it justifies its being
singled out as independent structural component.

The territory exploited is closely linked with the
physical geographic conditions. It is therefore best
to speak of the microenvironment occupied or
exploited by an economic collective. These are
related but not synonymous concepts, since that
of the natural environment includes a number of
other essential geographical components beside the
area proper, which are directly associated, of course,
with the territory and find reflection in it. These
components are the character of the soil, the com¬
bination of warmth and moisture, the natural vegeta¬
tion and possibility of using it as food, the fauna,
etc. With agriculture and stockraising the natural
biogeocoenoses are disturbed, though part of them
remains, and a combination of the cited conditions
is reflected in them precisely for a given locality. As
for the territory itself, its specific role in an antro-
pogeocoenosis is linked with the relief, and to a
significant extent with the regime of the hydro-
logical system determined by it. All the physical-

301

geographical components are quite generalised and,
when the structure of an anthropogeocoenosis is
analysed in detail, should be subdivided into their
more specific factors, e. g. a local lack of certain
microelements in the soils or, on the contrary,
an oversupply of same is no less important than
its fertility; there is no need for such a detailed differ¬
entiation of the physical-geographical conditions
when a general survey of the structure of an anthro¬
pogeocoenosis is made.

The normal vital activity of any system is governed
by functional connections as well as by its structur¬
al components; these connections alone give it its
dynamic. As I have just said, production activity
in the strict sense is the most common example
of a functional connection in an anthropogeocoeno¬
sis, through which the results of operations are passed
from the economic gr° u P to the environment and
vice versa. What does a group get from the territory
exploited? First of all, food. The composition, specific
seasonal character, and quantity of food characteris¬
tic for a given anthropogeocoenosis can be specified
as its ‘food chain’. It is obviously one of the functional
links between the microenvironment and the econom¬
ic group. Any concrete food chain depends to some
extent not only on the size of the group, the produc¬
tivity of labour, the intensiveness of the economy,
and the geographical characteristics of the environ¬
ment, but also on the state of other food chains within
the bounds of the given economic-cultural type.
Taken all together they constitute a food system
highly specific for each economic-cultural type.

A second line of connection between the economic
group and the environment consists in the obtaining
of materials for economic structures and shelters,
clothing, and raw materials for fashioning tools.
In the last case one may even speak of barter and
trade contacts with other anthropogeocoenoses of
both its own and other economic-cultural types,
since the microenvironment of an anthropogeocoe¬
nosis far from always supplies the group with the
raw materials it needs. One can speak of these barter

302

contacts from an early age; amber artefacts of a util¬
itarian as well as aesthetic purpose are commonly
known from Neolithic sites in Western Europe, while
the natural deposits of amber were located in the
Baltic (Koltsov, 1977). The same can also be said
for later periods about copper and iron ores. The
whole aggregate of useful materials drawn into the
production process from the microenvironment
can be designated as a production-economic chain
within a given anthropogeocoenosis.

Finally, the significance of discoveries and in¬
ventions within an economic group for the develop¬
ment of its production activity is obvious. The
transmission of labour experience from one group to
another plays a certain role in this case, although
it seldom functions just in that form and is most
often accompanied with barter and other social
contacts. Whether the technical achievements are the
group’s own or borrowed from neighbours, they form
a sum total of knowledge that is to some extent uni¬
que, and distinguishes a given economic group from
all others. They can be called its ‘information field’.
Through it a functional link is made between the two
structural components of an anthropogeocoenosis,
i. e. the economic group proper and the produc¬
tion activity. Investigation of informational fields
in various early human groups, of their exchange
and structure, and of the laws of their formation,
is one of the most pressing and fascinating tasks of
modem comparative study of cultures.

The last point that I must mention when discus¬
sing the functional relations within an anthropogeo¬
coenosis is the direct link between its microenviron¬
ment and the production process, and their reciproc¬
al influence. The environment does not influence
production activity directly; the group’s allowance
for its specific character transforms its information
field and already introduces corresponding useful
changes into the production process through that.
As for the production activity itself, it creates gradual
mechanical and energy impulses that it introduces
into the territory exploited. With hunting and food-

303

gathering, i. e. with an extractive economy, it is
usually only a matter of an impoverishment of the
natural biocoenoses in matter and energy. With
production forms of economy (agriculture and herd¬
ing) there is not only disturbance of the natural
biocoenoses but also a purposive alteration of them.
It is the aggregate of these energy impulses that
expresses the specific form of the microenviron¬
ment’s functional dependence on the production ac¬
tivity characteristic of a given anthropogeocoenosis.

It now remains to explain my attention to the
anthropogeocoenosis precisely during the transition
to the beginning of modem man’s cultural develop¬
ment, i. e. in regard to a survey already of Upper
Palaeolithic times. In my interpretation of an anthro¬
pogeocoenosis, the transition probably happened
at the dawn of labour activity, since the economic
group and production activity, and the territory
exploited (its three main components) obviously
existed in rudimentary form already within the life
cycle of Australopithecines. But that level of re¬
search is not accessible to me in practice as regards
Lower Palaeolithic, and even Middle Palaeolithic,
times; the archaeological sites known to us are too
selective, and few in number; the ideas of the geo¬
graphical environment and its local regionalisation,
and the time dynamic, are too summary and general¬
ised. The idea of anthropogeocoenoses arose through
a certain generalisation of the data for later stages
of man’s cultural development. Their history can be
traced, from the information available, to Upper
Palaeolithic times in more or less concrete forms,
but when we go further back chronologically we
see that it gets lost in the darkness of our ignorance.

There is yet another reason why I had to discuss
anthropogeocoenoses only after I had examined the
problem of the origin of man of the modem type.
At that stage of the Upper Palaeolithic the primord¬
ial ecumene had grown so much that human groups
really encountered a varied environment for the
first time that influenced them over a long period.
As I do not have the scope to go deeply into that

304

problem (to which hundreds of volumes on archae¬
ology have been devoted), I shall simply recall that
this extreme broadening of the ecumene, with var¬
ied natural zones, was reflected in the archaeologic¬
al materials in camps with locally peculiar flint in¬
dustries, a different fauna constituting the object
of the hunt, and greatly differing geomorphologic-
al conditions of the localities. How far the territo¬
rial differences manifested in separate sites stemmed
from geographical adaptation to the environment,
i. e. were something that falls into the context of
economic-cultural typology, and to what extent they
express ethnic traditions and represent archaeologic¬
al cultures in the narrow sense, are decided by more
or less plausible arguments in many separate cases;
yet the general approach has not yet gone beyond
the stage of exchange of contradictory, often dia¬
metrically opposed opinions. Archaeologists are
lost in endless arguments to decide whether they
are faced with a culture, or they have come across
a result of geographical adaptation. But it is quite
obvious that adaptation to the various topographical
zones in the Old World led for the first time, on a
broad scale, to the forming of anthropogeocoenoses
with a different economic specialisation which,
as I have already said, can be reconstructed within
certain limits. Ethnographic data also yield many
examples of varied specialisation of economic activ¬
ity within the underdeveloped cultures of hunters
and food-gatherers. That also justifies the thesis I
put forward above, and which I have discussed in this
chapter, viz., to examine anthropogeocoenoses at
the chronological boundary corresponding to Upper
Palaeolithic times.

The Anthropogeocoenosis in the System of Social
Relations and Its Geographic Adaptability

The total size of an economic group in primitive
society was governed by food stocks and the fullness
of the use of the exploited territory during the pro-

20-294

■05

duction process. The number of a group’s able-
bodied members, i. e. a favourable demographic
situation within it, and the reserve of production
capacity, so to say, also depended ultimately, other
conditions being equal, on the state of the food
chains, the scope of the information field, and the
productivity of labour. The state of the food system
as a whole had a certain impact on the state of the
food chains within the bounds of a given economic-
cultural type. In other words it is a matter of social
adaptability not only in relation to the geographical
environment but also in relation to other economic
groups, and in a broader sense to other anthropogeo-
coenoses. That also applies to some extent to produc¬
tion-economic chains (though they are more auto¬
nomous than food chains in separate anthropogeo-
coenoses). Of the two components of an anthropo-
geocoenosis, production activity responds most
distinctly, perhaps, to the environment. In any
case the sum total of technical skills and produc¬
tion-technical operations has an adaptive character,
reacting to the character of the material employed
and altering as knowledge of its properties becomes
fuller. Let me recall in this connection the stone
industry of Sinanthropus, for instance, peculiar
in form, in which adaptation is rightly seen to a
special material, quartz, used to fashion tools instead
of unavailable flint. An adaptive development was
manifested in production technique, one can think,
from the earliest ages of the history of the human
race. The productivity of labour was also not left
unaffected when there were changes in the physic¬
al-geographic conditions; with exhaustion of the
soil, for example, an economic group had to take
the road of intensification of agriculture, since
that was the only one that guaranteed its survival.

Much has been written about man’s purposive
effect on the environment. No less has been written
in recent decades that this influence is often destruc¬
tive. Even so the natural conditions are altered in the
latter case to some limit determined by the level
of maximum, even if temporary, satisfaction of

social needs. That means that there was a constant
process of ‘improvement’ of the natural environ¬
ment in anthropogeocoenosis, other things being
equal. By this ‘improvement’ I mean, of course, only
society’s needs and ever fuller mastery of natural
processes for the satisfaction of social needs. Social
adaptability thus embraces all the structural com¬
ponents of the anthropogeocoenosis, transforming
them in the direction of achieving maximum equilib¬
rium within it. The development of the functional
relations ensured the most rapid attainment of this
equilibrium. The whole structure of an anthropogeo¬
coenosis is an expression of social adaptability and
can be understood only as the result of adaptive pro¬
cesses operating throughout preceding time.

When the term ‘social organism’ began to be used
in the literature in the past twenty years, sight was
lost of the sense the word ‘organism’ has in biologic¬
al literature. In it an ‘organism’ is a discrete unit of
life below which life ceases to exist as a further in¬
divisible whole, and above which we have various
biological combinations consisting of the same or¬
ganisms. Multiplication is always a capacity of an
organism to reproduce. From that angle the expres¬
sion ‘social organism’ is unsuccessful, since it trans¬
fers a biological term with a quite concrete sense to
sociology and history and extrapolates it to phenom¬
ena that are passed down from generation to ge¬
neration not through a biological process of repro¬
duction but in a process of learning and transmis¬
sion of the total of historical knowledge and social ex¬
perience. True, people have now begun to write about
the ‘social heritage’, but one can make the same objec¬
tions in regard to that as in the case just considered.

Whatever the term itself, however, its use and
spread was symptomatic in many respects. It ex¬
pressed a growing tendency to recognise the structur¬
al character of the phenomena of culture and social
organisation, awareness of their organisation from
separate elements of a lower order, and the func¬
tionally full and exact interaction of those elements.
A deeper penetration into the essence of social

20 *

307

phenomena, and the heuristic force of a general-
science systems approach (which yields great fruit
in many fields of human knowledge), underlie the
nascent analysis of social phenomena as structures
of a higher or lower degree of complexity, and this
analysis is gaining an increasingly significant place
not only on the plane of theoretical premises but
also in the concrete gathering of historical and
cultural facts and description of separate social
phenomena.

What is the structure of such a component of
human culture as, say, material culture, a compo¬
nent quite distinctly described? Its main constituents
can be variously classified, and their mutual co-ordina¬
tion variously appraised, but it is clear that food,
shelter, household structures, and tools are quite
independent constituent parts, each of which can
be treated as independent. When we examine each
of them separately systems of the elements compris¬
ing them can be distinguished within them, hierar¬
chically co-ordinated with each other. The hierarchy
therefore has a multilevel character, so that we can
even say that we are faced not with a hierarchy of
separate elements but with one of systems of these
elements.

A few words about food as an example. If we look
at food from the angle not of what it provides for
the human organism, not from the angle of the daily
diet, but on the plane of an ethnographic evalua¬
tion, on the plane of an appraisal of its place in the
culture of a given society or given people, then
the main thing distinguishable in it is not the set
of products, more or less common to both agricultur¬
al and stockraising peoples, but its mode of prepara¬
tion. The different character of the use of fire in the
first place (open hearth, open brazier, various types
of oven) which determines the consumption of
food mainly in roasted or boiled form, later the
warming up of food a second time, the modes of
preserving food and their spread and of course the
limits of the consumption of raw, untreated food
products—are all quite intricate cultural skills, the

308

various combinations of which create the unique¬
ness of the food complex of each people. The perio¬
dicity of the intake of food is associated with the
economic organisation and mode of production (and
through it with the geographical environment),
and its cult and festive consumption, with estab¬
lished religious or cultural tradition. When we treat
this sphere from the angle of the functions that food
performs in the general structure of a culture, we
perhaps need to recognise it as secondary in rela¬
tion to the food complex, for it is the latter that
primarily creates the ethnic feature in food, and not
vice versa. At the same time, the food habits listed
above, the ensemble of which creates the food
complex, and the traditions of eating food, are
themselves complicated phenomena that embrace
many component elements, not independent of each
other but forming intricate hierarchical systems.

The same can be said as well about shelter and
household structures, and about tools. The position
of the hearth inside or outside the shelter, the posi¬
tion of the shelter itself in relation to the ground
surface (dugout, surface shelter) look to be basic
characteristics. The character of a surface shelter
or dwelling conical in shape (absence of a roof)
or the existence of comers in its structure (the
distinguishing of a roof as a structural element),
and finally whether it is dismantable and portable,
or permanent—are obviously features about which
it makes sense to speak only in relation to surface
shelters, i. e. they constitute a secondary set of
attributes in regard to the first. If the hearth is locat¬
ed within a surface shelter with a roof, it is taxonom-
ically more important from the angle of co-ordina¬
tion to divide dwellings into two types, with an open
hearth and a closed one (stove, oven), and then to
distinguish sub-type according to the topographical
position of the oven or stove in relation to the
shelter’s other structural elements. A new attribute
is introduced into the taxonomic appraisal of a
roofed surface dwelling when a feature like its connec¬
tion with household structures is introduced. In

309

short we see the same system of hierarchically co¬
ordinated elements in shelter as in food.

It would not seem to be an exaggeration to say
that the researcher meets the same hierarchy of
components and structural elements in sphere of
spiritual culture. The basic merit of Claude Levi-
Strauss’ work in this field is just that he first saw
and was able to give reasons for the existence of a
structural organisation in myth and partly magical,
partly religious ritual, transferring his observations
later to the sphere of material culture as well. His
interpretation of his own observations is largely
debatable, as subsequent critical research, in partic¬
ular that of Soviet workers, has shown, but it did
not delete the significance of the observations them¬
selves; rather it stressed their soundness and stimulat¬
ed further quests in the same direction.

To sum up, we can apparendy say that the struc¬
ture of culture as a whole is hierarchical and that any
sphere of culture, whether social organisation in
the broad sense, economic activity, material culture,
or ideology, consists of elements hierarchically
co-ordinated with one another. An approach to an
anthropogeocoenosis from that angle first of all
suggests search for its place in the system of social
relations and definition of its position in regard to
other phenomena of both a similar and different
order.

An anthropogeocoenosis itself, as we have already
shown, is quite an intricate structure that includes
a considerable number of components. First of all
it is an economic group functioning on three hypo¬
stases: (a) in regard to production as the part of it
represented by workers; (b) in relation to reproduc¬
tion as the effective reproductive part of the given
group; (c) in relation to consumption of food as a
whole. Then there is the territory exploited, which
is also defined by several characteristics, viz., its
total area (which is particularly important for hunt¬
ing and food-gathering, and nomadic anthropogeo-
coenoses), the area of directly tilled land (which
is essential in the first instance for agricultural anthro-

310

pogeocoenoses) the fertility of the soil and quality
of the pasture, and the character of the topography.
The third structural component, viz., production
activity is particularly important and in itself struc¬
turally intricate.

With the paucity of detailed facts at our disposal
we are unable to judge fully the real complexity of
production activity in the primitive world. Polemics
demonstrate the extreme degree of the relativity
of our knowledge in this field, and still more pains¬
taking research is called for in order to clarify many
concrete aspects of production activity in anthro-
pogeocoenoses of various character. The structural
complexity of an anthropogeocoenosis comes out
even more clearly when its inner characteristics
are examined, for example, its information field.
My opponent Yudin (1975) justly wrote that this
component is the most indeterminate, and still
yields an objective quantitative description with
difficulty. While not in the least pretending to give
such a description (in fact, we are far from able to
give a quantitative expression to information when
its quality is being considered; which is the chief
difficulty facing present-day cybernetics), I shall
touch on the structure of the information field
itself.

I fully share the approach to ethnic communities
as bearers of ‘clusters or concentrations of informa¬
tion’, which has already been convincingly argued
in the literature. Is the economic group within an
anthropogeocoenosis also a bearer of such an inform¬
ation cluster? The reply is very probably affirmative,
which does not of course signify equating econom¬
ic groups with communities of an ethnic type. Since
I have taken a stand on the hierarchy of the structural
organisation of culture, including spiritual culture, I
must recognise that information, too, and more so
the information circulating within human society, is
organised on a hierarchical principle, and that it
condenses at various levels.

The information circulating within an anthro¬
pogeocoenosis can be broken down into several levels.

*

311

-1

The first is the ethnic one, i. e. the stock of cultural "
values, traditions, and religious and magical ideas
that form part of ethnic self-awareness and pre¬
determine its inclusion in the make-up of a certain
people and no other. The knowledge and notions
associated with a given anthropogeocoenosis’ rela¬
tions with others of similar or, on the contrary,
opposite type (in other words everything that comes
into the sphere of exchange and contacts) seemingly
constitute a second level.

Finally, the concrete knowledge amassed in a
group, which constitutes its narrowly local specific
character (certain agricultural skills and observations
obtained during farming the given soils; practical
knowledge of pasturing animals in the conditions
of a given country and choosing the best pastures;
familiarity with hunting grounds, and so on, i. e.
the fullest possible idea of its microregion) can be
distinguished as a third level.

An information field has its own independent
existence (the laws of which are the province of
study of social psychologists). While a group’s eco¬
nomic activity can be characterised overall by the
number of its able-bodied members with only slight
modifications as to the level of their economic
qualifications, the scope of an information field is
not reducible to that quantity and its stock of tradi¬
tional production experience is much more impor¬
tant, other things being equal, than the number
of people who possess it. Given equal qualifications
a larger number of people always does a greater
amount of work, provided the quantitative difference
is considerable enough. While a broader information
field will promote a group’s economic prosperity
(even if it is a small one) by ensuring high productiv¬
ity of labour and more effective use of the exploit¬
ed territory. Finally, what the information field
absorbs from outside ultimately intensifies eco¬
nomic acitivity.

Thus, as we see, an anthropogeocoenosis is quite
an intricate structure rich in functional connections.

But it is still seemingly legitimate to consider it in

312

itself as quite an elementary system in the aggregate
of a society’s social structures. What arguments can
be adduced for that? An anthropogeocoenosis, as I
tried to argue earlier, is an elementary unit of the
primitive economy. Within it there is a complex
circulation and condensation of information typical
precisely of it. An anthropogeocoenosis functions
at the lowest level as an independent unit in the
sphere of geographical adaptations of a culture, and
in the economic sphere, when an economic group
enters into trade relations and barter with other
groups. While an intricate phenomenon in itself,
an anthropogeocoenosis is, at the same time, elementa¬
ry in regard to many other broader social phenom¬
ena, forming a component cell or nucleus of them.
That property also determines its significance in
the system of social relations and deserves special
consideration.

History knows little about societies that may
have existed for a long period of time secluded,
without connections of any sort with other societies.
For an anthropogeocoenosis contact with others
is a permanent aspect of its life rather than the ex¬
ception. It enters into the general system of another
society through this contact. What are the concrete
forms of these contacts? If we mean regular, func¬
tionally necessary ones, they are first and foremost
barter and trade contacts. They may be made direct¬
ly and, for the anthropogeocoenoses of developed
class society, through markets. In the latter case
an anthropogeocoenosis comes immediately into
a complex network of economic connections with
many others in a certain area; the concrete contribu¬
tion of each of them to the trade balance is determined
by many economic factors. With barter the opera¬
tion of these factors is obviously less significant.
Barter must have had a place from the dawn of con¬
tacts between primitive groups; the first archaeo¬
logical evidence of it are the finds dating from the
Palaeolithic of a geographically wide use of flint from
definite deposits, and facts from Mesolithic and Neo¬
lithic times of the very wide area of distribution of

313

amber. It is difficult to imagine markets of any kind
or primitive fairs in that age; there is no doubt that
exchange took place directly and, by embracing an
ever bigger number of groups over many generations,
ultimately led to a considerable area of distribution
of certain artefact materials for fashioning tools
and ornaments.

Earlier I had to write that anthropogeocoenoses
were seemingly not hierarchical in relation to one
another, and that a large number of them, rather than
the aggregate, constituted a similar economic-cultural
type. That is probably true in general, but my survey
has left out symbiotic anthropogeocoenoses, of which
plenty of examples can be cited. What is meant by
symbiotic anthropogeocoenoses? They are ones
differing geographically and economically that reflect
an urgent economic necessity for links between them.
One makes products and objects needed by the other,
and vice versa. They were far from always combina¬
tions of pairs, of course; sometimes many were in¬
volved and were transformed into relationships
between societies belonging to different economic-
cultural types. Anyhow, these relationships are
concretely displayed as symbiotic connections, not
always stable, of separate anthropogeocoenoses. Take,
for example, the reindeer (or nomadic) and coast
(or settled) Chukchi. The Russian explorer V. G. Bo-
goraz (1904-10) convincingly demonstrated what
a close economic link existed between these two
groups, and how necessary they were to each other,
receiving a large range of necessary products and things
from each other. So close a symbiosis, which inciden¬
tally also included Eskimos, i. e. cut across ethnic
boundaries, must have been formed quite long ago,
otherwise it is impossible to imagine a specialisation
into a deer-herding economy and one of hunters
of marine fauna. The latter, as has been confirmed
by concrete archaeological materials, has existed on
the Asian coast of Bering Strait for at least 2000
years. Similar relations of mutually profitable ex¬
change and regular trade links also existed between
the coast and reindeer Koryaks on Kamchatka, and in

314

general are broadly witnessed by Siberian ethno¬
graphy and the ethnography of North America.
No less eloquent examples can be adduced from the
ethnography of the tropical zone.

Symbiotic anthropogeocoenoses are thus a real
fact, are quite widely distributed, and introduce
a certain element of hierarchy into the organisation
of anthropogeocoenoses of different economic
specialisation. The archaeological data yield many
examples of the dependence of anthropogeocoe¬
noses of hunters and food-gatherers, and also of
nomads, on anthropogeocoenoses of agricultural¬
ists. In most of them, however, it is a relationship
of anthropogeocoenoses representing a tendency
to a different economic specialisation. It is much
more difficult to name examples of a symbiotic
community of anthropogeocoenoses of identical
economic specialisation.

To return to the system of primitive economy,
it must be noted that barter obviously arose be¬
tween separate economic groups forming indepen¬
dent anthropogeocoenoses in very early stages of
human history and constituted a substantial part
of the economic system of any society in any age.
At some, also probably very early, stage, the sphere
of barter embraced symbiotic anthropogeocoenoses,
most of which had a different economic specialisa¬
tion. The character of barter (exchange) in the first
and second cases was determined on the whole by
what the economic group produced, and that in
turn was determined by the resources of the territory
it exploited and the direction of the economy, which
also depended essentially on the territory. In primi¬
tive barter it is therefore not the economic group
as such but the anthropogeocoenosis that occupied
a key position, and its role in the economic relations
within primitive society was also determined by
that.

How was the process of geographical adaptation
manifested in separate anthropogeocoenoses, and
how was it expressed concretely? The topography
of the exploited territory was perhaps important

315

initially for its settlement by man; agricultural
groups either did not settle areas that were heavily
wooded, or had to transform them before they could
begin to exploit them normally. On the contrary,
when a forest tract was settled by a hunting group,
it immediately became a fully exploited area. Other
things being equal, the size of such a group was
already controlled during the first generation, and in
any case in the second, by the wealth of the fauna
within the hunted territory, or rather within the
given forest tract. The stock of potential game limit¬
ed the total size of the economic group, and with
it also its effective reproductive size, which in turn
determined the scale of reproduction and consequent¬
ly the size of the next generation and its effective re¬
productive scope. A point of view is argued that
demographic parameters even come into the system
of genetic adaptations of a population. Economic
activity, as the total constituted by the efforts of the
separate individuals, and the maximum economic
effectiveness of the group, are also predetermined
(other things being equal) by demographic character¬
istics. The number of animals within definite tracts
varies, as we know from their ecology, within quite
wide limits. If there were no crisis phenomena the
stock of food needed by a group must have corre¬
sponded over years to the minimum, not the maxi¬
mum, productivity of the area hunted. When we enco¬
unter crisis phenomena in the animal kingdom (epide¬
mics, migrations of carnivores), a critical situation ari¬
ses in the ecology of the economic group, too; it
either dies out (gathering can make good a shortage
of food only to a slight extent and over a short interval
of time), or must switch to another system of econ¬
omy and subsistence; or, finally, it is forced to quit
that ecological niche and occupy a new one.

Let us now consider an opposite example of the
exploitation of a territory by an agricultural econom¬
ic group. I shall not dwell on the situation of making
land for exploitation, say by clearing forest. The
history of slash-and-bum agriculture has been quite
fully studied archaeologically on the East Europ-

316

4

ean plain, but the data leave the transitional periods
unilluminated when a collective or group of colle¬
ctives had completely exhausted the resources of the
land over a broad territory and had to pass to open¬
ing up new tracts. That probably happened gradual¬
ly, but I shall leave the transitional situations un¬
considered, I repeat, so as not to obscure the main
picture. With the existence of tracts of land ready
for agrotechnical use, other conditions being equal
(I have in mind primarily the level of the traditional
culture of landworking in a given economic group),
the effectiveness of agriculture would be determined
by several factors, viz., the initial fertility of the soil,
an adequate number of cattle providing the necessary
I amount of fertiliser, and the availability in dry zones
of needed (or even surplus) water. Vast regions of the
globe were unsuitable in general for agriculture
without watering or even a whole system of irriga¬
tion measures. All those are indicators amenable
to quantitative measurement. In concrete ethnograph¬
ic studies the optimum balance can be deduced from
them that was necessary for the functioning of an
economic group, meaning by that the effect of the
cultivation of various crops. The further line of
reasoning is common with the foregoing. The balance
determines the minimum yield and through it the
demographic characteristics, as well, of an econom¬
ic group within an anthropogeocoenosis.

The adaptive processes occurring in the social
sphere of an anthropogeocoenosis, however, are not
limited simply to the phenomena listed. Household
buildings and dwellings largely reflect not only the
specific character of the topography and climate
of a belt of terrain but also the peculiarities precise¬
ly of a given microterrain and microregion (local
variations in the construction of the dwellings and
shelters by peoples with a considerable area of settle¬
ment are not just reducible to the predominance
of certain traditions). The same can be said as well
about a people’s dress, the local character of which
specifically reflects not only traditionally estab¬
lished stereotypes but also a functional rationality

317

depending on the humidity, warmth, and cold, the
character of the predominant economic occupations,
and so on. The weapons of hunting correspond on
the whole to the requirements posed by the hunting
of certain animals and birds; universal means of
hunting only appeared with the invention of the gun
and gunpowder, i. e. at a comparatively late stage
of the evolution of mankind. But what was the fauna
of an area, in relation to the human group living
in it, if not an element of the geographical environ¬
ment? Agricultural tools, especially primitive ones,
like hunting weapons, also bore the stamp of adapta¬
tion to the geographical environment. Since the in¬
formation field of any anthropogeocoenosis is pene¬
trable by other anthropogeocoenoses (ones existing
in complete isolation, if there ever were such in
human history, were rare exceptions), any invention
promoting men’s fuller mastery of the geographical
environment surrounding an economic group, spread
to neighbouring anthropogeocoenoses and even
beyond neighbouring territories.

It seems very probable that the set of socio-
geographical adaptations within an anthropogeocoe¬
nosis also penetrated the sphere of spiritual life.
The intimate aspects of living and daily life, respon¬
sible for the forming of aesthetic impressions and
actions, which later found reflection in folk art,
are a concrete characteristic of a given economic
group and no other. Eskimos carve images of walruses
from bone and ivory, but impressions of all the
specific walruses they have ever seen or killed are
merged in that image. Very different images of similar
animals can therefore be seen in folk art with a real¬
ist traditions however slightly expressed. It is the
same in folklore; it reproduces images of the specific
life of a particular group with exceptional fullness,
and these images enter the folk treasury of the people
as a whole. Taking that further, it can be suggested
that those phenomena in spiritual culture (as in
material culture) that were a sum total of analogies,
arose under the impact of geographical adaptations
of the culture and characterised some economic-

318

cultural specialisation or other, began to take shape
within an anthropogeocoenosis and only later,
through contacts between anthropogeocoenoses, pas¬
sed beyond the limits of individual ones and embraced
a considerable geographical region.

We have thus been able to see that, as in the eco¬
nomic sphere, an anthropogeocoenosis has the place
of an elementary sociogeographical nucleus in the
sphere of geographical adaptations of culture as
well. Cultural complexes of adaptive features began
to take shape within this nucleus and were united
at a higher level of integration into economic-cul¬
tural types. The number of anthropogeocoenoses
within some type, I would note, also serves to some
extent as an indicator of the progressiveness of the
system of mastering the geographical environment
in the course of economic life, compared with other
systems.

The Anthropogeocoenosis and the
Biological Differentiation of Humankind

This theme, briefly touched on above, is relatively
simpler than those I discussed in earlier sections.
Its simplicity is determined by the answer I gave
to the question about the relation of populations
as the elementary biological structures of the differ¬
entiation of the human race by morphological and
physiological traits, and of economic groups as
vehicles of economic activity within anthropogeo¬
coenoses. If the economic group within an anthro¬
pogeocoenosis is a population then the concentrat¬
ing of a certain set of morphological features natur¬
ally begins with this population and with it, too,
its biological separation from other populations.
But if, on the contrary, the economic group is broad¬
er or narrower than a population it is consequently
quite obvious that the anthropogeocoenosis has no
bearing on the process of biological differentiation
of mankind and develops quite independently of
this process. It seems to me, as I have already said,

319

that the answer should not be an alternative if we
really want somehow to take the actually existing
situations into account. In many mountain areas—
say in Daghestan, the Pamirs, or Nuristan—the mar¬
riage circle was limited in most cases by the'size of
the village; endogamy was strictly observed in it, so
that the boundaries of the anthropogeocoenosis
consequently coincided with those of the popula¬
tion. When anthropogeocoenoses have functioned
long enough, the potential population is transformed
into an actually existing one and displays a defi¬
nite genetic and morphological uniqueness. In any
case this uniqueness is clearly demonstrated in stud¬
ies of these areas, for which facts have been collect¬
ed by separate villages, especially in studies qf Da¬
ghestan (Hajiev, 1971). The anthropogeocoenosis
thus functions in this situation as a real, elementary
unit of biological differentiation within which com¬
binations of genetic attributes proper only to it are
concentrated, and sometimes, too, its morphologi¬
cal peculiarity which is not repeated within other
anthropogeocoenoses.

An economic collective, however, may embrace
non-endogamic groups. In societies whose social
structure is represented by clan groups, the situa¬
tion is more complex when these groups are orga¬
nised on a dual principle, or form a three-clan union.
The potential population and, with long existence
of the anthropogeocoenoses, the real one will then
embrace two or three collectives. In that case, the
anthropogeocoenosis is not a unit of biological
differentiation. When we pass to more developed
societies that have already lost traces of gentile
structure, the marriage circles, in accordance with
the prevailing norms for concluding marriages, will
not in principle be limited to some one economic
collective and may go as widely as you like beyond
the bounds of the anthropogeocoenosis.

With relatively large economic collectives it will
take a considerable number of generations for the
potential population to be converted into a real one.
This transformation will therefore obviously not

320

happen very often, yet there are no visible obstacles
to prevent it altogether. The inertia of overcoming
distance is a quite general and constantly operating
psychological principle, so that one can suppose
that it was also manifested somehow at the stage
of exogamous clan society. The role of an anthropo-
geocoenosis in biological differentiation is consequent¬
ly much less obvious in the situations just mentioned
than when the economic collective coincides with
the population, but it is still probable and quite
important.

I thus come to the conclusion that, just as the
anthropogeocoenosis occupied the place of an element¬
ary structural unit in the system of economy when
the human race was being formed and during the
geographical adaptation of culture, it also had impor¬
tant place in the biological differentiation of mankind.
When it coincides with a population its place is that
of the elementary cell or nucleus with which the pro¬
cess of differentiation begins. When it does not coin¬
cide with a population it nevertheless continues to
concentrate trends of biological homogenisation
within itself and so tends to a transformation of its
economic group into a potential population.

The Historical Dynamic of Anthropogeocoenoses

We were able to see above, during the foregoing
exposition, that an anthropogeocoenosis is a struc¬
turally integral and at the same time very intricate
phenomenon. We were also able to see that its place
is that of an elementary structural unit in the system
of a society’s economy, in the adapting of cultural
elements to the geographical environment, and in
the course of the initial stages of the biological differ¬
entiation of the human race. None of that, of course,
exhausts the whole complexity of the structural
organisation of an anthropogeocoenosis and the
diversity of the functional connections within it.
But enough has been said, in my opinion, to make a
case for the position of an anthropogeocoenosis in

21-294

321

a social system and to show that it merits close
attention both as an integral whole and as a structur¬
al element.

It is quite obvious that the anthropogeocoenoses
that form part of various economic-cultural types
differ in something essential; those that comprise
one ECT are similar, which is the result of economic
specialisation. But the attempt to classify them from
that angle does not come off for the understand¬
able reason that there is nothing new in it compared
with the typology of ECTs. Anthropogeocoenoses
might also be differentiated according to the size
of the exploited area or the number of economic
groups, but again that will largely repeat the econom¬
ic-cultural typology and have a formal character.
It would be non-formal and therefore methodolog¬
ically correct to subdivide them into types, start¬
ing from their internal structure.

One of these types is characterised by the predom¬
inant role of the structural component represented
by the microenvironment in the dynamic of the
anthropogeocoenosis. These are anthropogeocoenoses
of the first rank. In this case the geographical condi¬
tions largely determine the intensiveness of the
economic activity, the size of the economic groups,
the trend of the dynamic, and the stability of the
anthropogeocoenosis. Disturbance of natural bio-
coenoses leads to cessation of the anthropogeocoe¬
nosis’ life as a whole. This is an economy of food-
gatherers, hunters, and fishers. Anthropogeocoenoses
of the first rank are not limited just to forms of an
appropriation economy, as it would seem at first
glance. With extensive nomadic herding of stock,
the existence of favourable pastures and the opportu¬
nity to master them, in other words, the availability
of free pastures and consequently the degree of
pressure of other anthropogeocoenoses limit the size
of the stock reared, and so, too, the size of the eco¬
nomic group.

It is not the same with stall-rearing of cattle and
developed agriculture. Stall and semi-nomadic stock-
raising are only independent economic sectors in

322

r

exceptional cases; they are combined with agricul¬
ture. Both that combination and developed forms of
land-working give economic groups much greater
prospects of development through a rise in the
productivity and intensity of labour, purposive al¬
teration of the geographical environment, and the
creation of food stocks and consequently liberation
from direct, daily dependence on the exploited
area. These are anthropogeocoenoses of the second
rank in which the economic group itself and its
production activity alter the microenvironment
and direct its dynamic rather than being subordinate
to it.

In passing to a description of the time of existence
of anthropogeocoenoses and their dynamic in time
I must say that an anthropogeocoenosis naturally
exists while its main structural components exist.
Disappearance or destruction of one of them leads
to disappearance of the anthropogeocoenosis as a
whole. That is why cases of the migration of econom¬
ic groups to new areas and the mastering of new
environmental conditions can be classed as the forma¬
tion of new anthropogeocoenoses and cessation of
the life of old ones. That is particularly clear with
slash-and-bum agriculture. After exhaustion of the
soil and the clearing of a new tract of forest the
group passes to exploitation of this new area, which
is characterised by specific microconditions of the
soil. The distinguishing feature may be so insignifi¬
cant that one can speak of continuation of the normal
cycle of the anthropogeocoenosis’ development,
but sometimes it reaches such a level, even on neigh¬
bouring tracts, that a different agrotechnique is
required for the old crops, and even the introduction
of new ones. A new anthropogeocoenosis is created
in place of the disrupted one. I must specially stress
that the appearance of new anthropogeocoenoses
is never limited in such cases to the change of geo¬
graphical conditions and always affects the sphere
of production activity, even if partially, and modifies
the scope and structure of the information field
and with it the traditional set of technical methods.

21 *

323

There is consequently a clearly visible change not
only in the structural components of the anthropo-
geocoenosis but also in the functional links exist¬
ing within it.

What is the main line of the evolution of anthro-
pogeocoenoses, excluding dead-end cases? Any eco¬
nomic group endeavours to get the fullest and broad¬
est satisfaction of its needs, and consequendy has an
interest in intensifying its production efforts. There
are full grounds for thinking that this is expres¬
sed, in favourable historical and geographical condi¬
tions, in a transition from anthropogeocoenoses
of the first rank to ones of the second rank. During
that transition domination of the environment is
increased, new sources of energy are liberated, the
exchange of energy and matter within anthropogeo¬
coenoses is increased, and there is an intensification
of the process that the Soviet geologist A. E. Fers-
man quite rightly called technogenesis for the recent
ages of history, but which also took place in the early
ages of the history of the human race, starting from
its first stages. As regards economic activity as a
whole it is the transition from primitive forms of
land-working to developed ones, with stall-rearing
or pasturing of cattle. The initial stages of the cultiva¬
tion of plants and domestication of animals have
now been traced in general outline from the archaeo¬
logical material from Asia Minor. As regards the
origin of developed forms of agriculture, the transition
to them occurred ultimately wherever there were con¬
ditions in any way suitable for it; the polycentric theo¬
ry of the origin of agriculture developed by N. I. Vavi¬
lov also testifies precisely to the irreversibility of histo¬
rical progress in this field. It is the anthropogeocoe-
nosis that was seemingly the minimum structural unit
within which it was possible to pass from primitive
agriculture to developed, in other words, in which
an anthropogeocoenosis of the first rank could
develop and be transformed into one of the second
rank. Neither a population, which was not usually
an independent economic unit, nor even more an
economic-cultural type as a whole, which often (as

324

I said above) united peoples quite unrelated or hard¬
ly related to one another, could apparently claim
that role. The gradual development of mankind,
therefore, development of the productive forces,
and technical progress, the transition from an appro¬
priation economy to a production one (the most
important transition in the history of the human race),
found reflection in the transition of anthropogeoco-
enoses of the first rank to those of the second.

The conclusion from everything said in this chapter
is thus that an anthropogeocoenosis was an actually
existing phenomenon within an economic-cultural
type. The economic group, its production activity,
and the geographical microenvironment exploited
by it, are structural components of an anthropogeo¬
coenosis united by functional ties. Predominance
of the role of the geographical microenvironment
within an anthropogeocoenosis creates ones of the
first rank, while a predominant role of purposive
human activity transforming the environment makes
for anthropogeocoenoses of the second rank. The
evolution of the former often ended up a blind alley;
the main line of the evolutionary dynamic of anthro¬
pogeocoenoses consisted in passing from ones of the
first rank to those of the second.

IN LIEU OF A CONCLUSION: SOME
PROBLEMS OF PRIMITIVE MANKIND

-

A Look Back

I have written above that the origin of life on our
planet was simultaneously the origin of the biosphere,
i.e. the Earth’s quite thick envelope that permeates
all the other covering envelopes and is linked with
the activity of animate matter. Therefore, it is correct
methodologically to understand the biosphere not as
the film of life, a film formed by animate matter
as such, but the sphere of the covering envelopes
in which processes of the exchange of matter and
energy take place under the action of animate matter.
The biosphere is not only animate matter as such but
also the region of the planet’s covering space within
which the functional manifestations of animate
matter occur. It is a systems formation with a very
intricate structure that functions as a whole in rela¬
tion to all the rest of terrestrial nature not embraced
by life.

The founder of the theory of the biosphere,
V. I. Vernadsky, repeatedly stressed the active
creative character of living matter, regarding it as
a catalyst of natural processes. The structural differ¬
entiation of the biosphere into animate matter, bio¬
inert matter, and inert matter, and likewise the
intricate structural organisation of animate matter,
may be explained, as I have postulated, by the prin¬
ciple of limitation of the effect of feedback. With
the time-dependent duration of all natural processes
and the absence of an instantaneous interaction in
nature, feedback can only be displayed within a
system whose size depends on the speed of action

326

of feedback in the given system. The principle of
feedback, which ensures stability of the system,
operates in all ‘stages’ of the evolution of the organ¬
ic world.

I discussed the biosphere above as a cybernetic
system, i.e. one in which processes of the circula¬
tion of information and anti-entropic impulses have
a definite place. It is that which gives its function¬
al manifestations a special position in relation to
Cosmos. The principle of natural selection, which
satisfactorily explains the evolution of animate
matter in the history of Earth, cannot explain its
special role in the biosphere and through the bio¬
sphere in the energetics of the Universe, i.e. its
anti-entropic function. The subsequent develop¬
ment of science has made it possible to see the main
sense in the origin and evolution of life from simple
forms to intricate ones in the suppression of entrop-
ic tendencies, in its anti-entropic direction.

What maintains the anti-entropic function of
animate matter in the biosphere? The principle of
directional mutation, it would seem, enables us to
find the answer to that. The sphere of life is the
sphere of spontaneously occurring mutagenesis,
which has a directional character. This direction is
expressed in any mutation’s being always a deviation
from the normal, and the diversity of the forms of
animate matter having been maintained by impulses
of mutation throughout the geological history of
our planet; natural selection consolidated this func¬
tional property inherent in animate matter. Muta¬
tions constantly create more and more new infor¬
mation in the biosphere, in that way counteracting
the advance of entropic quiescence, while selection
ensures a diversity of channels for the spread of
information. It can be thought that animate matter
also arose during the evolution of matter because it
had an anti-entropic tendency within itself in the
form of directional mutations.

Vernadsky, the true founder, too, of the theory
of the noosphere, or sphere of reason, stressed
the fundamental character of the transition from the

327

biosphere to the noosphere, in which the geologic¬
al, technical, and spiritual activity of mankind is
manifested. The invigorating force and universality
of this theory is embodied in the intensive develop¬
ment of the sciences of the varied forms of the inter¬
action of society and nature going on before our
very eyes. The term ‘noosphere’ has caught on during
this development and is being widely used by special¬
ists of the most diverse profiles, and has been used
in the preceding pages without reservations of any
kind. In essence, however, it is not very success¬
ful, and only the authority of its inventors, and the
habit of use over many years prevents me from
rejecting it—human reason itself is a product of
society; the labour theory of anthropogenesis discus¬
sed above suggests that there would have been neither
man nor human reason without labour and without
the production of material goods. The term ‘anthro-
pogeosphere’ would have been more successful, and
it could be recommended for future use. The stru¬
ctural components of society in its relations with the
environment singled out and described earlier, i.e.
anthropogeocoenoses in the aggregate of all their
various shapes, form the anthropogeosphere.

In the preceding pages I have traced the transition
of man’s anthropoid ancestors to the simplest labour
operations, and also the decisive influence of that
period on the further course of anthropogenesis,
the origin of language and thinking, the forming of
the simplest types of social relations and social
organisation, the moulding of man of the modem
type, and the first steps in the development of a
producer economy. The anthropogeosphere, by
analogy with the biosphere, I specially stress, took
shape as a system, and its genesis is not reducible
simply to the origin of the structural components
composing it, however important they may seem at
first glance. The origin of all these phenomena in
succession does not contradict that. Unfortunate¬
ly the general laws of the formation of systems
have not yet been finally found in the theory of
systems, especially of systems of a high degree of

328

r

complexity, but it is clear that the rise of any system
is not an instantaneous event but a process, though
a process, of course, that signifies a qualitative
leap. The exceptional structural complexity and
functional capacity of the anthropogeosphere could
not help take a long time to form (two or three
million years as my preceding exposition indicated),
but that time is an instant in the geological history of
Earth. The beginning of the forming and develop¬
ment of the anthropogeosphere coincides with that
period of the evolution of Earth when man and his
labour began, for the first time in its history, to affect
the part of nature accessible to him in an active, pur¬
posive way, instead of submitting to it.

Division forced its way into the monolithic process
of the forming of the anthropogeosphere right from
the start; the cradle of the human race was not a
‘patch of earth’ but a broad region. In the earliest
days of its development, throughout the Lower
Palaeolithic, the human race had already made vast
areas of the Old World habitable. The anthropogeo¬
sphere functioned, immediately upon its origin,
not only as a single whole in its intimate, internally
inherent structural connections, and as a structural
entity in contrast to the biosphere and nature as a
whole, but also in many spatially expressed forms.

Do the territorial boundaries of the structural
components of the biosphere, in particular of the
vegetation cover and animal kingdom, have any
significance for study of the territorial differentia¬
tion of the anthropogeosphere? In general that is
not a fundamental or basic question of the history
of primitive society, since the deep spatial division
of the anthropogeosphere happened in the later stages
of historical development; I shall therefore limit
myself here to brief comments. Science suggests
that the vegetable kingdom’s exceptionally great
number of genetically relatively independent forms,
which constitute a natural system, and the complex¬
ity of the ecological relations between them, led
to the differentiation of two regions in the geography
of plants. There are fewer species and higher taxonom-

329

ic categories of animals than of plants, and in the
geography of animals there is not a division into two
sections similar to that just mentioned for plants.
As for man, this division is all the more devoid of
meaning if only because the family of hominids
(as I showed earlier) has always appeared as an aggre¬
gate of a few genera and species, and modem man
has in general been a single species with a panecumen-
ic distribution since the Upper Palaeolithic.

At this point in my argument I must take into
account that reality which predetermines the approach
to the spatial division of the anthropogeosphere from
its earliest stages. This implies that man originated
immediately only as a social creature, that is to say
that, with the transition to labour, the collective
behaviour proper also to many animals became the
most powerful and sole driving force of further
progress, i.e. became social behaviour; all forms of
culture have been created in the course of labour
and social forms of life. Even the exclusively biologic¬
al aspects of the evolution of man of the modem
type are governed by biological laws transformed
by the social medium.

I tried to show earlier that the biological evolu¬
tion and cultural development of the human race
went on throughout Upper Palaeolithic times in close
interdependence, but were at the same time character¬
ised by a certain autonomy. With the advent of man
of the modem type the level of development of the
biological organisation had begun no longer to influ¬
ence human groups’potentialities for cultural develop¬
ment. If we take notice, in addition, of the different
rates of biological and social change, then the in¬
dependent spatial division of sets of the human or¬
ganism’s biological properties on the one hand, and
of sets of cultural phenomena on the other, which
had already begun during the evolution of the hominid
family, had become the historical rule in the Upper
Palaeolithic with the appearance of modem man.

To conclude this section I must say that the
view that man’s origin was essentially a sharply
expressed heightening of the living organism’s mor-

330

r

phological organisation is still quite commonly held.

If we take anthropogenesis or the moulding of
man’s physical type in isolation, then morphologic¬
al appraisals are quite legitimate. There is no arguing
that mastery of bipedal locomotion and freeing of
the hands broadly cleared the field of evolutionary
potentialities for the ancestral form, which it realised,
but the realisation took place more in the sphere
of social and cultural development than in morpho¬
logical changes. The whole logic of my exposition
has been to argue the following: that it is not suffici¬
ent to regard anthropogenesis from the morpholo¬
gical standpoint; that the origin of the anthropogeo-
sphere was a cosmic process like the rise of the
biosphere, but in its result fundamentally more
significant and momentous, since the anthropogeo-
sphere decisively influences the course of natural
processes in the biosphere as well. Therefore, when
attempting to characterise the rise of the anthropo-
geosphere within the context of the evolutionary
approach, I would like to return to the concept of
epimorphosis introduced by I. I. Shmalgausen (1940),
an eminent specialist in our field. He wrote:

One can imagine a boundless extension of the medium,
i.e. not only an organism’s spread over the whole sur¬
face of the globe where life is at all possible, but also
the exploitation of all vital resources. Such an organism
would occupy a quite special position since it would
rise high above all organisms, master the whole environ¬
ment, and subordinate it to its needs. Such a high
stage of aromorphic development consequently entails
something new in principle, viz., dominance over the
conditions of the medium. I therefore suggest the term
‘epimorphosis’ for this stage of development of organ¬
ic forms. It goes without saying that only one species
of organism can master the whole environment (at a
given time), since mastering of it means dominance
over all other organisms. This last conceivable stage of
evolution is being reached at the present time by man.

The Biosphere and Man’s Psychic World

The anthropogeosphere, having arisen from the bio¬
sphere, and developing through ever broader use of

331

the resources of inanimate and animate nature,
has operated from the very start as a powerful factor
of disturbance of natural processes, whose role has
steadily increased with the approach of modem
times, and has attained colossal dimensions in the
past quarter of the century. The disturbance of natural
inanimate matter and natural biogeocoenoses is one
of the burning problems of the modem world; only
in socialist society is it receiving a well considered
solution through social ownership of the means
of production, planned organisation of the economy,
and planned exploitation of resources allowing for
the natural course of their restoration.

But mankind, having created the anthropogeo-
sphere from the biosphere (as I have tried to show),
has not become isolated from terrestrial nature. The
latter retains its influence in the psychological sphere,
too; the human brain and human consciousness were
formed in terrestrial space, in the world of the
colours, sounds, smells, and rhythms of our planet.
Contemplation of the overwhelming majority of the
phenomena of nature has always evoked a feeling
of harmony in man. That is seemingly due to the
fact that the call to communion with nature, which
resounds in all forms of art, has not become obsolete
in spite of the ever growing complexity of the social
environment. The therapeutic effect of the whole
set of health measures associated with communion
with nature is immense; and its secret consists not
only in the invigorating effect on the tone of the
cardio-vascular system, metabolism, etc., but primar¬
ily in its beneficial influence on our nervous system.
One must assume that this system’s main reactions
were built up in conditions of adaptation to the
natural environment in the early stages of anthropo-
genesis, and that the favourable effect on modem
man of a return to that environment, even for a short
time, is due to that.

It is no exaggeration to say that the biosphere
and its chief components have a fundamental place
in this complex of effects. Only the sounds, colours,
and rhythms of the biosphere create a propitious

332

background for man, to which he had already be¬
come adapted in the course of anthropogenesis,
and evoke a feeling of harmony in his soul. Modem
man’s neuropsychic ‘stress’, about which Hans Selye
(1956) has written so eloquently, is also fully or
partially overcome with protracted contact with the
biosphere.

The wealth of the biosphere in colours, rhythms,
and sounds has always been an inexhaustible source
of artistic inspiration. The artists of all ages from
the earliest times have intuitively understood that.
They not only drew creative stimulus from the bio¬
sphere but also many subjects. I do not mean natural¬
ly, direct reflection of the biosphere in artistic work,
but have in mind finer, mediated links of creativity
with the biosphere; the ancient use everywhere of
plant motifs in applied art, for example, and under¬
standing of the beauty of asymmetry, which also came
into art through contemplation of the biosphere.

To sum up, I can affirm that the biosphere is not
only the source of life for man in the direct sense,
the source of food, clothing, etc., and not just a
fundamental factor in the moulding of man, but
also (as I have tried to show in the appropriate chap¬
ters) a powerful stimulus of the most cherished thing
in man, viz., his creative energy and evocative-cogni¬
tive activity (as art is often called). By preventing
disturbance of the biosphere, which still continues
unfortunately in the modem world, man not only
preserves it but also endeavours to preserve him¬
self as an integral, harmonious personality, linked
by his roots with the Universe, and at the same time
creatively independent.

Why Does the Human Mind Seek
Explanations?

The evolution of the physical type of man’s ancestors
and the development of material culture throughout
the Palaeolithic were simultaneous, as I demonstrat¬
ed above, with a remarkable development of the

333

brain and psyche, development of various spheres of
consciousness, and perfection of its logical structures.
The whole of this vast round of matters, discussed
in many major works, is beyond the scope of my
book, but I must examine and explain one very im¬
portant property of human reason here, it seems,
since it largely determines the main line of develop¬
ment of human behaviour and underlies that form of
consciousness which, stimulated by the development
of material production, ultimately led to systematisa¬
tion of the initial knowledge.

The point is the inherent capacity of human reason
to explain the separate phenomena of nature and to
try in the end to understand the sense of the Universe,
the need not to limit itself simply to the surface of
things and processes but to penetrate into their
essence, and to go beyond the simply apparent.
This powerful need of the human mind has always
compelled humankind to seek ever newer unexplored
roads, and not to be satisfied with the understand¬
ing of reality already achieved.

This phenomenon manifested to some extent in
the sphere of thought, in all periods of human history,
can only be explained by the permanent action of
the needs of social production and social life, which,
when refracted in the psychic sphere, also stimulated
scientific and philosophic quests at every stage of
historical development. This constantly operating
factor was progressive tendencies in the develop¬
ment of the productive forces, and of relations of
production and social relations in general.

Something in the working of consciousness, of the
mental structures of the human brain, took hold of
these tendencies, responded to the invigorating
stimulus of the development of social production
and material culture, and was directed towards the
unknown expanses of ignorance and overcame them.
This was that need of developing human reason for
explanation that I remarked on above. What it is, and
how the various mental functions were accumulat¬
ed so as to evoke it are not explicable in terms of
a morphophysiological or narrowly psychological

334

f

approach. The microstructure of the brain and of
its separate fields and deep structures has now been
quite well studied, no worse perhaps than its macro¬
structure, but it often does not respond to function¬
al interpretation and is not of much help for explain¬
ing the psychic or ideal proper; the connection of
the brain’s microstructure with its psychic functions
is indirect and multilevel.

The human brain is formed of tens of thousands
of millions of cells. Within that enormous aggregate
local associations and hierarchically organised sub¬
structures are distinguishable, and within them com¬
plex systems of functional substitution operate.
The brain is not a sum total of these billions of
cells, but a system consisting of them and organised
by them, which imbibes, processes, and organises
information reaching the brain from the external
world. The human brain is the highest product
of the evolution of matter, because it is the material
substance of matter’s understanding of itself. Its
chief manifestations can only be explained in terms
of philosophical abstractions of the highest order.
I am still in the sphere of hypotheses here, and am
compelled to theorise, guided more by methodolog¬
ical principles than by the level of specific knowl¬
edge of the brain’s working reached at the present
time. Therefore, when formulating a hypothetical
answer to the question posed above, I take my start
not from the working of the human brain as such
but from the imaginary behaviour of systems of an
infinitely high level of complexity.

The essence of the answer consists in the proposi¬
tion that, when a system exceeds a certain level of
complexity, it has to ‘foresee’ or ‘predict’ the course
of future events in order to behave adequately in
the surrounding medium; otherwise, when encoun¬
tering changes in the conditions, it will progressively
lag behind them in its responses by virtue of its
complexity and the impossibility of its being rapid¬
ly restructured. The human brain is obviously a
system of that complexity, and everything I have
just said can seemingly be legitimately extended to

335

its working. Furthermore, since a level of complexity
of the organisation of the working of the brain has
been reached that provides the possibility of an ob¬
jective explanation and forecasting of the phenomena
and processes taking place around man in nature
and society, that has provided it with a constantly
widening spectrum of potential adaptive possibilities.

Periodisation

The famous abstract of Lewis Morgan’s Ancient
Society compiled by Karl Marx, Engels’ remarkable
book The Origin of the Family, Private Property
and the State, and Lenin’s theoretical propositions
are the foundations of the methodological principles
that have guided me in distinguishing the
steps in the historical progress in the early stages
of the evolution of the human race. The first of these
principles is that these stages must be distinguished
on the basis of the level of development of the pro¬
ductive forces, singling out the key elements in the
dynamic of the relations of production. The second
principle prescribes an approach of singling out
these key elements as a package, allowing for social
relations in the broadest sense, as well as for the rela¬
tions of production.

Starting from these general principles, both Marx
and especially Engels stressed the exceptional role
of kinship in primitive society in contrast to their
much less active role in civilised, class societies.
And although kinship relations coincided in the main
with relations of production in primitive society,
some of their manifestations went beyond their
context, forming the social relations sphere in addi¬
tion to the production one.

These principles permit considerable freedom in
grouping the factual material already amassed in the
field of study of primitive society; the problem of
a clear periodisation is one of enormous complexity
because of its intricacy. The age-old attempts to
create a periodisation that would be rigorously scien-

336

tific and at the same time acceptably convincing in
general, have not been crowned with success (for
a survey of them, see Sellnow, 1961); there is no una¬
nimity of views on it in the Soviet literature either.
So as not to increase the size of my book I shall
not go into the schemes proposed but shall stress
the main point: they are based on a vast number
of facts and have laid a splendid basis for further
treatment of the problem of a periodisation that
would cover all aspects of the development of primi¬
tive society and would reduce them to the main
determining points in its history.

In that connection it is essential at this point to
oppose attempts to counterpose the early and later
stages of man’s history, to call the history of primi¬
tive society prehistory in general historical periodisa-
tions, and to suggest that real history begins with
the advent of civilised, class society, while the history
of primitive society is only the preparation for it.
The history of humankind begins in reality with the
development of the human race, and the human race
appeared with the formation of the hominid family
and the beginning of social labour transforming
nature, i.e. the events with which the history of
primitive society began. All my preceding pages have
been devoted to showing the single stream of the
historical process in the mutual interdependence
of the development of the phenomena that consti¬
tute it. When surveying the history of mankind as a
whole, one can subdivide it into the history of primi¬
tive society and the history of civilised, class society;
the history of primitive society includes the mould¬
ing of human society and the early history of the
institutions composing it. Within the history of
primitive society itself one can normally distinguish
an epoch of the primordial horde, to which I paid
much attention in earlier chapters, and an epoch
of the primitive commune, description of which
is a special exercise and which I have only indirectly
touched on when surveying some of the early
forms of the production economy, leaving uncon¬
sidered the complex forms of social organisation

22 294

and the nascent ideological superstructure in the
Upper Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic ages.
The wealth of the material accumulated in these
fields, I repeat, and the abundance of theoretical
interpretations, call for special monographic discus¬
sion but do not, however, have any priority for the
central theme of my book, the origin of the human
race.

Earlier I suggested and argued in favour of divid¬
ing the age of primitive horde into three stages. The
first stage, that of the pre-horde, embraces the groups
of all hominids belonging to the subfamily of Austra-
lopithecines that lived two or three million years ago.
The level of horde relations was not so very much
higher at that stage than in the communities of
gregarious animals. The first shoot of a separation
from the animal kingdom had already sprouted but
it was still very short; Australopithecus moved about
in an upright position and was capable of very simple
labour operations, but the absence of speech and
language argued above suggests a very monoto¬
nous, uniform cycle of life consisting in the main of
animal-like displays and manifestations. The second
stage was that of the early primordial horde character¬
istic of members of the genus Pithecanthropus,
which flourished in the time interval between rough¬
ly two million and 200,000 to 150,000 years ago.
Primitive speech and language had already developed;
the fashioning of tools and means of hunting had
become more complicated, attesting to an increase
in know-how and an extension of knowledge, and to
a complication of relationships between the separate
members of hunting groups. Judging from the ten¬
dencies that could have developed from the existing
structure of simian troops, and from the low expecta¬
tion of life of early hominids, there must already
have been an institutionalising in the early primor¬
dial horde of a taboo on sexual relations between
members of the different generations. The third
stage, finally, was that of the developed primordial
horde, confined to the Neanderthal species, and exist¬
ed before the Upper Palaeolithic and the advent of

man of the modern type. Broad discussion of the
diversity of the paths of forming the gentile system
must, very possibly, refer to phenomena that took
place precisely in the developed primordial horde,
which was distinguished in addition by the origin of
many primary ideological phenomena which got full
development in the Upper Palaeolithic.

The age of the primitive commune, which began
at the boundary of the Middle and Upper Palaeolith¬
ic, continued until the age of the rise of civilisations
and the first class socio-historical formation. It is
reasonable to call the first stage of the primitive
commune that of an early community of consumers.
Chronologically it falls into the Upper Palaeolithic
and Mesolithic; by economic form it is the anthropo-
geocoenoses of the appropriating stage of hunters,
food-gatherers, and fishers; by social status it is pre¬
dominantly gentile groups. The second stage can
legitimately be called that of a developed commun¬
ity of producers. It is the Neolithic and Bronze ages,
a society of early agriculturalists and herdsmen, and
developed gentile groups, and clans within which
there were both matriarchal and patriarchal forms.
These two stages in the development of the primitive
commune, together with the stages of development
of the primordial horde, form five stages through
which history passed on the road to the formation
of civilisation, class society, and the first states.

Law or Chance

I have come to the end of my journey through
the puzzles of primitive history. I have tried to move
forward slowly and circumspectly, without diverg¬
ing too far to the side, but at the same time trying
to penetrate more deeply into the tangle of the un¬
known and striving to grasp something of what is
seen there, while recording the rest for future cogni¬
tion. Primitive history presents itself to us as the early
history of mankind, i.e. a law-governed stage of the
development of life, comprising in turn a natural

22 * 3 3 9

L.

stage in the development of inanimate nature. Thus,
to the question behind the heading of this section,
viz., did law or chance govern the formation of the
human race, I could answer that law and only law
was responsible for the origin and development
of mankind, law and only law predetermined the
origin and development of the anthropogeo-
sphere. The answer would be true, but true as a
first approximation: it leaves chance out of it, the
significance of which is immense in the evolution
of inanimate and animate nature, and which must
have played a role, too, during the origin of mankind.
Only after weighing up this role and understanding
its boundaries Can I consider my task completed,
and the answer sufficiently full.

The marxist theory of historical science has con¬
vincingly demonstrated the thesis of the determining
role of the popular masses, and the role of the individ¬
ual in the historical process. As the reader will under¬
stand, this has an essential bearing on my theme.
Historical personalities are people who occupied
command postions in political affairs and produc¬
tion, and outstanding figures in culture. It was from
them that remarkable inventions or resolute deci¬
sions, also the progress of humanity, or the changes
introduced into the law-governed character of histor¬
ical processes, came. Any individual, and great ones
moreover, is psychologically unique; his decisions
and contribution to the historical process are deter¬
mined not only by the needs of the historical times
but also by the special features of character, qualities
of personal temperament, and personal circumstances
that find expression in life experience. The deeds
and actions of people within a class are coloured
in their own way by the qualities of their person¬
ality. To use the language of cybernetics, they are a
noise of history interfering with its natural course.

Primitive history (it is my profound conviciton)
is much freer of this ‘noise’ than the history of class
society. But naive ideas are met to this day about
the complete subordination of the individual to the
collective in primitive society, about the latter’s

3 40

complete, unqualified institutionalisation, knowing
no exceptions. Not only did the tribal chiefs and
medicine-men enjoy great respect by their fellow-
tribesmen, and great influence in social affairs, but
so did skilled hunters and wise old people. Influence
of that kind was not however the influence of a
separate individual but the influence of the social
group and of the social stratum to which the individ¬
ual belonged; it was the influence of able hunters
and of old people made wise by experience. The
primordial group was small as a rule, which also
limited the sphere of the display of individual author¬
ity. Primitive humanity therefore did not in principle
know the ‘heroes’ characteristic of the history of class
society; the actions of such ‘heroes’ were limited
in their consequences and were less significant the
closer they were to the sources of mankind. Primi¬
tive man had to cope with the law-governed character
of the historical process in a purer form than class
history.

Does that mean that law operated inevitably in
the forming of the human race in contrast to chance?
A view of the completely law-governed character
of the evolution of the highest forms of animate
matter, and of the inevitability of its transition to
the evolution of man, has been reflected in the
literature, but it can only be accepted as a basis.
The influence of chance factors on the fate of separ¬
ate primitive groups, especially in the earliest stages
of the moulding of the human race, was intensified
by two circumstances: (a) the influence of biology
on the historical process in the interval of history
before the advent of man of the modem type; and
(b) the almost complete dependence on natural
phenomena and processes within a consuming econ¬
omy. In the first case natural selection intervened
actively in the specific historical fate of separate
groups of primitive man, and in the second case,
elemental forces of nature. There was a progressive
law-governed development of mankind, overcom¬
ing elemental forces of nature. There was a progressive
law-governed development of mankind, overcom-

. H

ing elemental ‘noise’. To come back once more,
therefore, to the alternative in the heading of this
last section, I must formulate it as follows in order
to answer the question fully: law and chance gov¬
erned by law.

At the beginning of my book I presented argu¬
ments for the idea that life is a rarity in the Universe,
and rational life even more so. There is evidence for
this view both in the empirically obvious absence
of signals of any kind from the Universe that would
witness to the existence of other civilisations and
the absence of traces of life in the spaces of the
solar system around us, and in the theoretically
demonstrated quite narrow range in general of
conditions within which life could arise. From all
points of view the genesis of rational life was a like¬
ly process but there are not sufficient grounds for
postulating its frequent realisation.

Such is the objective scientific conclusion.

This puts a planetary and universal responsibility,
without alternative, on the human race in our ex¬
tremely dangerous explosive age.

THE LIST OF RECOMMENDED READING

Alexeev, V. P. Paleoantropologia zemnogo shara i formi-
rovanie chelovecheskikh ras (The Palaeoanthropology of
the World and the Forming of the Human Races), Nauka,
Moscow, 1978.

Alexeev, V. P. Istoricheskaya antropoligiya (Historical Anthro¬
pology), Vysshaya shkola, Moscow, 1979.

Alexejew, V. Gedanken zur Dynamik der Biosphare und
der Evolution der Menschheit. In: F. Bulck (Ed.) Mensch
und Umuielt (Friedrich-Schiller-Universitat, Jena, 1973),
pp. 48-53.

Arutyunov, S. A., Sergeev, D. A. Drevniye kultury aziatskikh
eskimosov (Uelensky mogilnik) (Ancient Cultures of the
Asian Eskimos lUelen Burial] ), Nauka, Moscow, 1969.

Arutyunov, S. A., Sergeev, D. A. Problemy etnicheskoi istorii
Beringova morya. Ekvensky mogilnik (Problems of the
Ethnic History of the Bering Sea Area. Ekven Burail),
Nauka, Moscow, 1975.

Atlas of Primitive Man in China (Science Press, Beijing, 1980).

Axelrod, D., Baily, H. Cretaceous dinosaur extinction. Evolu¬
tion, 1968, Vol. 22, 3:595-612.

Bartstra, G. Contribution to the Study of the Palaeolithic
Pajitan Culture, Java, Indonesia, Part I (E. J. Brill, Leiden,
1976).

Behrensmeyer, A., Hill, A. (Eds.). Fossils in the Making Verte¬
brate Taxonomy and Palaeoecology (University of Chicago
Press, Chicago, 1980).

Berg, L. Homogenesis or Evolution by Laui (Constable, Lon¬
don, 1926).

Berg, L. S. Trydy po istorii evolyutsii (Works on the History

343

of Evolution), Nauka, Leningrad, 1977.

Biosocial Anthropology (Malaby Press, London, 1975).

Bishop, W., Miller, J. (Eds.). Calibration in Hominoid Evolu¬
tion. Recent Advances in Isotopic and Other Dating Meth¬
ods Applicable to the Origin of Man (Scottish Academic
Press, Edinburgh, 1972).

Bordes, F. The Old Stone Age (World University Library,
New York, 1968).

Boriskovsky, P. I. Drevnii kamenny vek Yuzhnoi i Yugo-
Vostochnoi Azii (The Old Stone Age in South and South-
East Asia), Nauka, Leningrad, 1971.

Boriskovsky, P. I. Drevneishee proschloe chelovechestva (The
Most Ancient Past of Humankind), Nauka, Leningrad,
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This book, written by T. Oizerman, Full Member
of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and A. Bogo¬
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my of Sciences, theoretically summarises the history
of world philosophy. It analyses different definitions
of philosophy, changes in its subject-matter in the
course of development, and its place and significance
in the historically sucessive systems of knowledge
about nature and society. The authors show the
basic features and uniformities of the development
of philosophy and study the continuity, progress,
and contradictoriness of philosophical development
and the formation of the prerequisites that made
possible the Marxist revolution in philosophy.

The book is intended for philosophers and the
general reader.

k

PROGRESS PUBLISHERS
will be putting out

FROLOV, I., Man-Science-Humanism: a New Synthe¬
sis (Humankind at the Threshold of the 21st Century
Series)

This book considers one of the most topical world
problems: the place and role of Man today in his rela-
lationship with science and technology. It demonst¬
rates the scientific understanding of the social essence
and biological existence of Man, the humanisation of
the social essence and biological existence of Man, the
humanisation of science, and the formation of a new
type of science of the future relying on humanist ide¬
als. The author analyses the “eternal” problems of
mankind, which have acquired particular urgency in
the age of the scientific and technological revolu¬
tion—those of the meaning of life, of death and im¬
morality. The book shows that the incipient synthe¬
sis of Man, science and humanism will find its con¬
summation in the new culture of communist civi¬
lization.

The book is intended for the general reader.

Man Through the Ages

Dr. V. P. Alexeev, Corresponding Member of the
USSR Academy of Sciences, is the author of many
works in his speciality, the history of primitive
society, and has taken pari in more than fifty field
expeditions in the USSR, India, and Cuba. His best
known works include Historical Anthropology,
The Geography of Human Races, and The Origin
of the People of Eastern Europe.

Dr. Alexeev says of the present book, in his
Preface: “This book is an attempt to take as full
account as possible of the latest findings and data,
and to modify general conceptions in accordance
with them, but at the same time to avoid burden¬
ing the text with petty details and to maintain
a smooth presentation and paint a whole, integrat¬
ed panorama of primaeval history. Therefore,
while giving their due everywhere to the creators
of the science, I do not avoid discussion of dis¬
puted, still unresolved issues.”

NOA2A533250 ,

411U7T INR <3

0-A2A5-3325-3

101b 00130

$ A-TS i ANPAR

ALEXEEV

ORIGIN 0 T HUNAN

RACE

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